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zepskies · 2 years

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Never Say Goodbye - Part 8

Pairing: Dean x Female Reader

Summary: The first time you and Dean sensed each other’s thoughts and feelings, you were just kids. It would take years to realize that you both were bonded for life, and even longer to finally meet. [Soulmate AU] (Rated M for eventual scenes – 18+)

Word Count: 5,000 Warnings: Angst, hurt/comfort and feels, alcoholism lol

Part 8: Long Distance

Sam stayed back at Bobby’s while Dean accompanied you back home, now that it was no longer a crime scene. When your dad finally got off of work, he greeted you in the living room with relief in his eyes and a warm hug.

That warmth diminished when he noticed Dean standing behind you.

“Dean’s a friend of Bobby’s,” you explained. Dean introduced himself and shook Jack’s hand.

“Yeah, wanted to make sure she got here okay,” Dean added.

Jack scrutinized him as they shook hands. Maybe he suspected that you and Dean weren’t telling the whole truth, but Jack seemed to accept things.

For now.

“I think we’ve got frozen pizzas for dinner if we don’t want to order out,” you said. You went over to the kitchen to check, but without you realizing, that brought you right to the spot where you were assaulted just two days ago.

The blood had been scrubbed off the tile floor. There were still small, suspect stains in the grout, though. You looked up and saw your reflection in the microwave. It wasn’t unlike that night, when you had looked up and seen your bloody face, then looked down and seen Danny Schmitt lying dead on the floor.

You flinched when a hand came to rest on your shoulder. It was Dean, and you gave him a small grateful look. You briefly covered his hand with yours, but you took a breath and forced yourself to move past the spot, and continue toward the fridge.

Jack watched the small moment between you and Dean. Dean knew that Jack had caught it, while you remained oblivious as you puttered around in the kitchen.

The three of you made somewhat painful small talk while waiting for the pizzas to cook. When it was done, Dean helped set the table and you cut out the slices. Jack took an opportunity to grab a beer and approach you.

“So why’s Skater Boy still in my house?” Jack asked. You could only assume he meant Dean.

“Dad, please don’t be rude,” you warned.

“You seein’ him or something?”

You set down the pizza cutter and gave Jack a pointed look. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

Dean could hear you and Jack talking from the dining room. He took issue with your dad’s phrasing. It was a little more than “seeing,” but at least now he understood what you’d been talking about with your dad. The guy was a hard-ass.

So Dean would go along with however you wanted to play this. It was only fair.

The problem was, this mostly left you to keep the conversation going once the three of you sat down to eat. For forty-five minutes you did your best to fill the silences, but Jack was a man of sparing words.

“So yeah, I should be able to finish my thesis in time. I’m looking to have a job lined up after I graduate next semester, but the only thing I’ve really been seeing is teaching positions,” you explained.

“Teaching’s acceptable,” your dad said, after finishing his second beer. “And doable, for you.”

You glanced at your dad with a telling press of your lips.

Dean understood your annoyance. Doable for you?

What was that supposed to mean?

“Well, I’m not sure I want to teach,” you said. “I’m thinking of applying to the natural history museum here in Sioux Falls.”

“And do what, dust off wax mannequins?” Jack remarked.

You set down your glass of water a bit too hard. “If you’re going to say something, say it.”

Jack gave you a look of exasperation. “I’m just sayin’. You went to college without a real plan, now it’s bitin’ you in the ass. And it ain’t been cheap—”

“For you it has, because I put myself through college,” you countered.

“What I’m saying is, now you’ve limited yourself—”

Jack actually reminded Dean of his dad in a lot of ways. But he had a feeling this man didn’t know his daughter very well. Dean wasn’t normally one to meddle in things that weren’t his business, but you were stressed out enough. He didn’t like the way your shoulders were tightening. He could feel your upset through the soul bond, and your eyes were dangerously close to frustrated tears.

He touched your knee beneath the table and looked over at Jack.

“Look, maybe we could just take things down a couple notches here,” Dean suggested.

Jack turned to him with an angry frown. “Now would be a very good time for you to butt out. Dean, was it? Matter of fact, why don’t you get the hell out of my house—”

“Okay, that’s enough!” you shouted. You clenched one fist on the dining table, the other on your knee beneath the table.

Both men looked at you with mixed reactions of surprise.

You turned to your dad. “The difference between you and me is I pursued what I was interested in. You went after what you were good at.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Jack asked, after his shock wore off.

“Nothing,” you said. “But neither is what I did. I’m proud of where I am so far, what I’ve accomplished. I’m sorry if you don’t think that’s worth much, but I do. You don’t have to agree with my choices, but you can at least respect me.”

Silence fell across the table.

Secretly, Dean was proud of you, and he tapered down a smile. He knew you sensed it when you glanced at him.

“I respect you,” Jack said, pulling your attention away. “But I’m still your father.”

You shook your head. “You don’t, Dad. If you did, it wouldn’t be so hard to tell you that I’m not dating Dean. He’s my soulmate.”

Once again, shock made the air tense. Jack’s eyes were open wide, looking from you, to Dean, and back again. His brows furrowed.

So Dean, ever the tension breaker, offered you and Jack a resigned grin. He pointed to his and Jack’s beer bottles, which were empty.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll get the whiskey.”

When your father’s shock finally wore off, he had plenty of questions for Dean. About where he lived, his job, his life in general—most of which Dean couldn’t answer honestly. Jack was a police detective by trade. As such, he was a perceptive man who knew he wasn’t getting the whole story, but eventually you cut off the inquisition.

You showed Dean up to your room, where you two were able to get some privacy.

“I’m proud of you,” he said, once you both sat on the edge of your bed. “I could tell that, uh…that conversation with your dad was a long time coming.”

You nodded, but you couldn’t quite smile. “When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow,” he replied.

Tomorrow. You sighed, but you also tried not to let him sense your darkening emotions. Instead, you sat up straight and gave him a decisive look.

“Okay, then I’m staying with you at Bobby’s tonight,” you said. One more night together.

Dean’s lips raised into a grin. “Yes, ma’am.”

You spent that night mostly playing cards with Sam, Dean, and Bobby as they taught you how to hustle poker. You drank and ate and laughed, and at night, you and Dean continued to learn each other’s bodies.

In the morning, you hugged both Sam and Dean goodbye.

“I’m sorry,” Dean apologized again while he held you. “I’ll call you later.”

Holding back your tears, you nodded and kissed him one more time. He tucked a finger beneath your chin to keep your head up. You tried at a smile, which he appreciated.

Then Sam and Dean climbed into the Impala. You watched them leave, and Bobby laid a supportive hand on your shoulder.

The next year was torturous for you both.

Dean updated you after various hunts. Not on a regular schedule, but often enough. Sam started calling now and then with historical questions—some you could answer off the top of your head, and some you actually put in some effort into researching. Dean didn’t like it at first, but soon he started calling you for information himself.

You were smart, quick on your feet, and realistically, a convenient resource since you had access to a university library. You enjoyed it though. You were happy to be helpful to them, but you also liked the research. Often they were interesting topics in the mythologies of different cultures (if you took out the whole hashing and slashing of innocent people and monsters out of it).

But that part too was gratifying; you felt like you were helping them save lives, in whatever small way you could offer.

You also visited Bobby more often. It was your last semester of college and he helped you with your thesis, actually giving you good notes. Dean, bless him, was encouraging, but really only helped you with the movie references. Bobby actually gave you feedback on your writing and added tidbits to the historical aspects as well.

You learned that Bobby was actually really smart. Maybe that was where you got your affinity for history and language arts.

One day though, your uncle noticed that you weren’t as into it as usual. You had a half-drunk beer in your hand while the two of you working in the living room—on the final draft of your thesis.

Bobby had asked you a question about a certain line, but you hadn’t heard him.

“Hey, you awake over there?” he asked. Jolting in your seat, you looked over at him apologetically.

“Sorry, what?”

Bobby smiled wryly. “Let me guess. Dean ain’t called you?”

You shook your head. “I talked to him yesterday. They’re investigating a cursed painting in New York somewhere.”

“So what’s with the face?”

You shrugged. “Nothing.”

After you didn’t give Bobby anything to go on, he sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Okay…”

You two spent an extended moment in relative silence, where only faint music from the radio played in the background. Plus, the occasional turning of pages from Bobby’s book.

“It’s just,” you started to say. Bobby closed his book with an expectant look on his face.

“I’ve waited twenty-four years to find him,” you said. “Twenty-fucking-four. And now I still have to wait. How long will it be until I can start my life?”

“Well first of all, you’ve been living your life long before Dean,” Bobby pointed out. “You have your own thing going, and right now, so does Dean. When he finishes dealing with his past, he’ll be able to start thinkin’ about his future.”

That was fair, you considered. It made you feel a bit immature when he put it like that. Nor was it realistic of you to expect Dean to drop everything else in his life for you…

You and your uncle had gotten closer over the past few months. So you felt you could ask him something that had been on your mind for a long time.

“Feel free to ignore me, but, about Aunt Karen…was she your soulmate?” you asked.

Bobby looked over at you after sipping at a fifth of whiskey. He seemed reluctant to even say her name.

“She was,” he admitted.

You knew this would be a sensitive subject, but you took a chance. “What happened to her, Bobby?”

At first, he was quiet. You just waited to see what he would say, if he was willing to trust you. After a short while, slowly, he told you.

She’d been possessed by a demon.

Not one exactly like Sam and Dean were hunting, but close enough. However, Bobby didn’t know then what he knew now.

She’d been coming at him with a knife, and before he realized what he was doing, he was defending himself with the same knife. But she just kept coming. It took your father, Jack, to pull her off of him. And Rufus, who had been tracking the thing, broke into Bobby’s house and exorcised the demon.

Then, a black spirit drained out of Karen’s body. She had enough awareness to look down at her three stab wounds before she fell to the floor. Finally, she bled out.

She was gone before either Jack or Bobby could get her to a hospital.

Jack had reluctantly helped cover up the scene by saying she’d suffered a psychotic break and attacked her husband. Bobby’s case was self-defense.

You could relate to that, at least.

By the end of his story, you were trying in vain to stifle your tears. When you were able to speak, you asked another question.

“Then…why does Dad hate you so much if it wasn’t you fault?”

“Because I killed her. My own wife, my…” Bobby sighed, a heavy, sharp exhale. “His baby sister. I can’t blame him.”

Because he still blamed himself. In the end, it was blood all over him and the body of his soulmate in his arms.

You didn’t know how to comfort him, but you tried. Still silently crying, you rested your hands on his arm while he couldn’t quite bring the whiskey back to his lips.

When you graduated in May, you didn’t expect Sam and Dean to come. You’d told them about it, but when the ceremony came and you stood on that stage, you didn’t see the brothers in the crowd. You saw your dad, Bobby, some of your colleagues from the university, and a couple of your best friends from high school.

You forced your disappointment down and accepted your diploma with a smile. You were now finished with school, complete with your master’s degree in Greek and Roman Studies. And in two weeks, you had a job lined up at the local museum. You would be giving exhibit tours, and you already had a script you had to memorize by your first day.

Maybe it was basic, but there was a path for growth there for you. In a few years you could work yourself up to museum curator!

The point was, you felt it was a step in the right direction.

Later at home that night, your dad congratulated you while you cut up the cake he bought for you in the kitchen. He set a hand on your shoulder, subtly asking you to pause what you were doing. You turned to him with a smile.

“I’m proud of you, darlin’,” he said. “You’ve got drive, and you did what you set out to do…so much of you reminds me of your mom that way.”

Tears welled up in your eyes. Thinking about your conversation with Bobby a few weeks ago, you looked at your dad a bit differently. You had compassion for him. Like Bobby, Jack had lost his person. He was just a man who couldn’t let go.

“I get why you have a hard time remembering Mom,” you said. “Now that I have Dean, I can’t imagine how I would feel if I lost him.”

But it was still a monumental fear. Every day that you didn’t hear from Dean between hunts could be nerve-wracking when you thought about what he was doing. Especially when you didn’t know how much he left out for your sake.

So when Jack nodded, you looked up and saw rare emotion in his eyes.

“How’s Dean?” he asked.

“He’s on a job in South Carolina,” you lied, and felt a twinge of guilt doing it. “Severe rat infestation.”

“Okay. And he couldn’t take a couple days off the rats to be here today?”

Your lips pursed at the question—mainly because it was the same one you had. You just didn’t want your dad to know that.

“He’s working hard,” was all that you could think to reply. You knew it totally didn’t convince your dad, but you handed him a slice of cake to shut him up about it.

Later in your room, you laid out your cap and gown on your bed. You debated keeping them in your closet, or just donating them. It wasn’t like you were ever going to wear this again.

Hey, beautiful.

You gasped when Dean’s thoughts startled you. You whipped around and there he was in your doorway, dressed in his usual jeans, shirt, and leather jacket combo. He smiled and held a bouquet of flowers for you.

“Congratulations, Professor,” he said.

Tears welled up in your eyes as you went to him. You actually almost bowled him over by jumping into his arms.

“Whoa!” he said with a laugh. He gripped your thighs tight around his hips but lost a few steps, crashing against the wall and disturbing some of your frames. You both laughed and kissed deeply.

After a while, you slid back down to your feet and he stroked your cheek in affection. He offered you the flowers again, and you accepted them with a pink blush. They weren’t just basic roses. Most of them you couldn’t name, but there were daisies and large orange flowers, thin springs of small white and green ones, white and red flowers that greeted you with soft blooming petals.

“Thank you, these are beautiful,” you said.

His smile fell. “Sorry I’m late.”

Your excitement dimmed, but you shook your head. “It’s okay.”

Dean noticed your cap and gown on the bed and gestured to them.

“Mind modeling that little number for me?” he teased.

Your mouth twitched. “What, really?”

“Yeah, why not? I wanna see the full package of the college grad.”

With another little blush, you obliged him. After setting down the flowers on your dresser, you slipped on your large, silky graduation gown first, then the cap. You adjusted the tassel so it wasn’t directly in your face. Then you grinned and struck a pose for him in the shapeless gown.

“Real sexy, huh?”

Dean smirked. “Absolutely. College girls are always sexy.”

You laughed and dropped the pose. Both of you sat down on the bed while you took off the cap. Dean fixed your frizzy hair as a result.

“Well, officially I’m not a college girl anymore,” you pointed out. “I’m starting at the museum soon, I think I told you.”

Dean nodded. “That’s okay. Hot nerds are even better.”

You giggled and took his larger hand in yours. “Where’s Sam?”

“Chillin’ at Bobby’s.”

“Ah…you saw my dad?”

“Downstairs. Wasn’t exactly happy to see me,” Dean said. “I, uh…I am sorry I couldn’t make it to the big ceremony.”

You shook your head with a smile. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

Soon, you fell into the pull of him as he guided you into a kiss. You held his face in your hands, and he tugged you into his lap.

“Up for a sleepover?” you asked between heated kisses. Though it was difficult to think at the moment, Dean hesitated.

“What about your dad?” He groaned when your nails dragged down the back of his neck. You gave a nipping kiss between his neck and shoulder.

“You can be quiet, can’t you?” you said against his skin. Normally you wouldn’t dream of doing this when your dad was in the house, but it had been months since you’d seen Dean. Months.

One of your hands moved down between your bodies to palm at the growing bulge in his jeans.

“Well,” he said with a grunt, “I’m always up for a challenge.”

He left you on the bed, just long enough to get up and lock the bedroom door, before he all but tacked you back onto the bed and made you squeal.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Jack heard your bedroom door click. He sighed, trying his damnedest not to think about what might be going on upstairs.

He could storm up there and break down the door (like he was itching to do). You might be an adult, but this was still his house…

But he also didn’t want to disturb the newfound peace he’d found with you today.

Time for a drink, he decided. He grabbed his keys and headed out to the nearest bar.

Jack loved his town. He’d lived here most of his life, met his wife here, started a family and a career and all the rest here. But there was only one good bar, and that meant he was liable to run into his brother-in-law, AKA the town drunk.

Jack spotted Bobby down at the end of the bar with a young man, dark-haired and likely in his early 20s. Jack knew that your Dean was staying at Bobby’s house. Jack also knew that your Dean had a brother, Sam. This dark-haired beanpole was most likely him.

Jack didn’t know much about Dean, or his family, but he wanted to. He wanted to know more about the man in his daughter’s life.

So instead of heeding his instinct to sit at the bar alone, he made his way all the way down and greeted Sam and Bobby civilly.

“Your Dean’s brother?” Jack asked. Sam’s handshake was firm as he nodded. Jack detected the strength behind that loose-fitting flannel.

Hmm, not so much a beanpole, Jack thought.

“Yes, sir. I’m Sam,” he replied.

Jack nodded at their whiskey glasses. “Let me buy another round.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Bobby said.

“It’s all right,” Jack said. “I’ve got it.”

Bobby wasn’t sure what Jack was aiming at. They hadn’t spoken directly in a few years. But he could assume it had something to do with Dean dating the man’s daughter.

Jack turned to Sam and asked mild, probing questions. He learned that Sam had gone to college: pre-law at Stanford. He had been all set to go to law school and become a successful lawyer. Sam sounded like the kind of guy Jack would’ve preferred you end up with.

“But instead, you became a traveling exterminator,” Jack said. “What happened there?”

Dean had evaded this question before, but Sam told him something different.

“Well, uh, to be honest…something happened that kind of derailed things,” Sam said.

“Which was?” Jack asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

Sam met his gaze steadily, but Jack saw something deep there, held behind polite bar conversation.

“My girlfriend died,” he confessed.

Jack set down his bourbon on the counter. A tendril of guilt licked down his spine for pressing. “I’m sorry.”

Sam nodded. “After that, I spun out for a while…but Dean, he didn’t let me crash. He got me back working with him on the job. Something…constructive. It kept me going.”

Jack considered that with his glass back up to his lips.

“After my wife died, I had my work and my daughter,” he said. “That’s it. That’s my life. It’s honest.”

Sam inclined his head. The conversation continued from there, on and off while they drank. Bobby interjected every now and then, but he kept nursing his second whiskey.

Eventually though, Sam bowed out with one last shake of Jack’s hand and a pat to Bobby’s back. It left the two older men to finish their drinks.

“They’re hunters, aren’t they? Like your friend Rufus,” Jack said.

Bobby glanced at him. Then he sighed.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “But they know what they’re doing.”

Jack shook his head. Goddamn hunters.

But the more he considered his brother-in-law, your conversation with him earlier resonated in his mind.

“I get why you have a hard time remembering Mom,” you had said. “Now that I have Dean, I can’t imagine how I would feel if I lost him.”

Jack looked over at Bobby. As much as he hated to admit it, they were living the same life, more or less. He’d just had you to keep him somewhat anchored. Approaching sane and respectable. Bobby had been alone.

“It doesn’t get easier, does it?” Jack asked.

“What doesn’t?”

“Life,” he replied. “Without her.”

Bobby paused. Once he realized what Jack was really saying, he sighed once again.

“Nope,” he agreed.

“I don’t know Dean Winchester,” Jack said. “You do. Should I be worried?”

“He’s a good kid. Got some rough angles,” Bobby conceded. “But you’ll never find a more loyal man in Creation. He’d break his own neck before he’d hurt that girl.”

Jack nodded. “Good. Saves me the trouble of breakin’ it for him.”

Bobby chuckled and finished his whiskey. Jack ordered him another.

Bobby looked over at him again. “Thanks.”

Jack nodded. They drank in companionable silence until the bar closed.

The next morning, you and Dean stood outside your house on the driveway. The Impala shone next to you in the bright day’s sun. Soon, you’d have to watch the car peel away. In a way, it was harder the second time.

Dean held your cheek and kissed you nice and slow. You knew he could sense what you were feeling right now, but you tried to hold it back from your connection as much as you could.

You let your hand drift down from his shoulder to his chest, over his heart.

I love you, you wanted to say. It was poised on your tongue, but you were afraid of being the first one to say it. Maybe it was silly, but you wondered if you had gotten attached to him more quickly than he had to you.

Meanwhile, Dean sensed your anxiety and worry, but he didn’t hear your thoughts and insecurities that you were holding back. So he just chocked it up to the fact that he was leaving. Guilt nagged at his heart.

“I’ll call you,” he promised. He always promised to call, and he always did. This time, it just didn’t make you feel that much better.

But you still faked a smile and bent to grab the bagged up containers you’d put together for Sam and Dean. It was some homemade chicken parmesan and garlic rolls, which would probably last for all of a couple of hours, knowing Dean.

“Share with your brother this time,” you reminded him. Dean smirked and took the bag from you.

“No promises.”

The next few months were spent with you and Dean each focusing on your jobs. You talked on a frequent non-schedule basis: phone calls on your lunch break, on your commute before or after work, between Dean’s hunts, on long drives across state lines.

When you didn’t have time to talk, you sent emails. Yours were often longer and more detailed than Dean’s, but that was just how he spoke. Direct and to the point, albeit with one or two dirty jokes thrown in.

Sometimes all you two had time for was a brief text here and there. Dean would wish you a good morning. He’d tease you, asking what you were wearing.

“Yoga pants and a ratty old shirt,” you’d replied once.

He’d said: “Hmm, yoga pants.”

You laughed. “You’re ridiculous. I’m literally eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s right now.”

“Ooh, what flavor?”

You’d rolled your eyes. The only thing that distracted his dirty mind was his stomach.

Sometimes you would send him a new song to listen to (which he would complain about, if it was anything past 1989).

But then that day came.

That dreaded day when Dean didn’t answer your call. It wasn’t just that he didn’t answer right then. You had finished your last tour of the museum for a class of second graders and were walking out to your car. It wasn’t unusual for Dean to hit you back later if he was mid-hunt.

So you waited until the evening without a response. A warning bell trilled in your mind, but you tried not to get worried just yet. You decided to text him.

Hey, just checking in.

You went to bed that night still waiting for his reply.

Then the morning came, and you went a little crazy. You called him twice, then Sam.

When Sam didn’t pick up, that little bell in your mind was a screaming fire alarm. It was a Friday though. You still had to go to work.

So you got ready for your day as usual, though even your manager Jerry noticed that you were distracted. You had been working at the museum for around six months now, and you had proven yourself to be a dedicated worker and enthusiastic about your work. So Jerry knew when you were having an off day.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” you said. “It’s nothing.”

“Okay, well, you’ve got another tour in five minutes,” he reminded you, before he tsked and rushed over to a group of teenagers who were messing with the neanderthal exhibit.

You sighed. The moment you thought about checking your phone again, it rang in your pocket.

Quickly you checked who it was, your eyes widening. You answered, “Sam? Is everything okay? I’ve been calling—”

“Listen,” Sam said. “I…I need to tell you something.”

Your heart dropped into your stomach when you heard his tone. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t good.

“What happened?” you asked.

“We found our dad,” he said. “And the demon.”

You gasped and moved to a corner of the museum for some privacy. “You did? That’s…that’s great! But what—”

“We got into an accident,” said Sam. “My dad and I are okay, but Dean, he’s…”

Your breath stilled in your lungs, even as your heart started to pound.

“Where are you?” You started toward the back offices to grab your purse and fished for your car keys. While Sam told you the hospital and the city, your heels clacked on the shiny tile as you booked it to your car.

“Hey, where are you going?” Jerry asked.

You put Sam on hold for a moment and said, without hesitation (and tears in your eyes):

“I’m sorry, I have a family emergency. My boyfriend just got hit by a truck.”

AN: Aaand another cliffhanger. But I'm sure you know where this is going next...

2.01 "In My Time of Dying," in which the reader finally meets John Winchester, but she could end up losing Dean for good this time.

(Also, there are just a few more chapters after this. I promise I won't go through the entire show lol.)

To keep reading: PART 9

Series Masterlist

Dean Winchester Masterlist

Main Masterlist

@curlycarley @buckywenal24 @jamerlynn @iprobablyshipit91 @globetrotter28 @deamus-liv @irgendwas122 @deans-spinster-witch @dogbarkbark4445 @my-proof-is-you @vera0124 @deans-baby-momma @lacilou @samanddeaninatrenchcoat @happygoodvibe @theonlymaninthesky @spnexploration @itzabbyxx @cevans-winchester @imagineteller1ller1 @icequeen1371 @mininjageek @tiredqueen73 @bitchwitch1981 @abbigaleelizabeth @ohgodthebogisback @where-the-river-bends @loveprof6 @thespnlover

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natrogersfics · 2 months

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PREVIEW - Always Remember Us This Way (Romanogers AU)

Artwork by @faith2nyc Part III of the So It Goes... 'verse

“These are the occupancy numbers for the month?”

Natasha’s lips curl up into a smirk as Loki peruses the latest report on the tablet. “Try the entire Summer.”

Loki’s eyes dart to her. “You don’t say,” he says, a smile spreading across his face when she nods in confirmation. He hands the tablet back, and the pride that fills his expression is difficult to miss as he leans back against the couch cushions. “Seems our little experiment is working.”

“Maybe a little,” she says, causing them both to chuckle.

If working meant blowing projections out of the water, then that’s absolutely what their experiment – that is, throwing rolling, invitation-only events at each revamped Red Guardian property – is currently doing. Their Las Vegas property had benefited from a surge of bookings following the opening of the Red Room, and if there’s anything she’s gleaned from the sudden resurgence of their once ailing asset, it’s that there’s still cache in the hotels that her parents had built. The waning interest of their patrons in recent years had nothing to do with them tiring of their prime locations but with the predictable, cookie-cutter experiences they were offering. After all, luxury hotels on the Strip were a dime a dozen in Sin City. But crown one with an ultra-exclusive rooftop club and suddenly everyone is clamoring for an invitation.

Needless to say, they had taken that concept and ran with it, applying it next to Red Guardian’s hotel in Milan. Following the rebuild of its grand ballroom and the subsequent Masquerade Ball that Loki’s company had arranged with every celebrity and socialite in attendance, what was once considered a hemorrhaging outpost in their portfolio is now a go-to destination in the North of Italy – a fact she’ll happily highlight at her next meeting with the board.

“So, where to next?” Loki asks, spreading his arms across the back of the couch. “Tokyo? Dubai? Oh, what about Ibiza?” He sighs. “A couple of glasses of tinto de Verano under the Iberian sun sounds heavenly right about now.”

“Are we picking our next project or your next vacation?” she says with a scoff.

Loki rolls his eyes. “One day, darling, you will learn to play as hard as you work.”

“Who’s to say I don’t?”

Intrigue colors Loki’s face, but before he can ask one of the hundreds of questions she knows is already forming in his mind, a knock causes them both to look towards the doorway of her living room to see Steve standing there, a folder clutched between his fingers.

“Mr. Rogers,” Loki greets cheerfully. “How nice of you to join us.”

“Mr. Laufeyson,” Steve says, and she doesn’t miss the way his tone sounds more formal than usual. She offers him a little smile when he turns her way, but it does nothing to dislodge his humorless expression. “When you have a minute, I’d like to go over the preliminary background check for your potential client.”

“The one who requested to meet with us tomorrow?” Loki clarifies before she can respond, earning a nod from Steve. “Since when do we run background checks on clients?”

“Since it’s become clear that security’s been a little too lax as of late,” Steve says, to which Loki arches a brow at. “Safety isn’t something we’re going to trivialize.”

“We can go over that report right now,” she says before Loki can say anything more, tapping his foot with her own in an attempt to get the man to shut up. From her periphery, she catches the confused stare Loki sends her way, but she ignores it as she directs Steve’s attention back to her. “We’re just about done here anyway.”

Steve walks further into the living room at that, stopping just in front of her coffee table to hand her the folder. As she opens it up, Loki scoots closer to her, peering over her shoulder as they both study the picture clipped to the corner of the report. The woman in the image couldn’t be much older than she is, her striking features breathtaking. Everything from her flawless, porcelain skin to her gray eyes that are wide and piercing – a stark contrast to the dark curls cascading down her shoulders – made for an intriguing sight.

“Her name is Viper?” she asks as she unclips the photo to read the rest of the information on the page.

“Yes and no,” Steve says, prompting her arch a brow. “Viper is her online persona, but her real name is Ophelia Sarkissian.” He gestures towards the rest of the report. “If you turn a few pages, there are some screenshots from her social media profiles. She made a name for herself by reviewing cosmetics for the eleven million followers she has across all platforms.”

Loki lets out a low whistle. “That’s quite a following.”

“Which is why she may be looking to capitalize on it,” Steve says. “She recently filed an LLC for a company called Viper Cosmetics.”

“Finally putting her doctorate to use,” she notes, reading over Ophelia’s accomplishments that include multiple PhDs on top of being a board-certified chemist. “Filing for an LLC is literally step one in putting up a company, though. Why would she want to meet with us already?”

“Probably to secure a venue for her when she’s ready to launch,” Steve says. “Between Vegas and Milan, the uptick in your occupancy has been all over the news.”

She rolls her lips, considering the thought before looking at Loki. “She’s not our usual clientele.”

“True, but it could be a good way to get our hands into that industry,” Loki offers.

“I suppose,” she says. “What else do we know about her?”

“At the moment, not much more than what’s in that file,” Steve admits, a hint of frustration slipping into his voice. “But like I said, this is just a preliminary check. The team and I haven’t found anything online that’s raised any red flags either, so as long as the meeting is in our territory, we don’t see an issue with tomorrow’s meeting.”

“I trust you,” she says, watching the way the tension in his shoulders ease ever so slightly at her words.

The faintest of smiles cross his lips, and she’s glad when that softens his worry-hardened expression. “I’ve also reached out to my contact at the FBI to see if she can find anything. Just in case.”

“Well,” Loki says, “I, for one, already feel very safe.”

This time, she doesn’t even think twice about joining Steve in sending him a glare, shaking her head when Loki only whips out his phone in response, scrolling through it unbothered. She looks back at Steve. “You’ll let me know if she finds anything?”

“Of course,” he says, checking his watch. “I’m actually going to meet with her this evening. Sam’s right at the door, but I’ll be in first thing in the morning.”

“Oh, okay,” she says, feeling a sudden wave of disappointment at the idea. Even so, she musters a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“Goodnight,” he says before turning to leave.

She watches his figure retreat down the hall until it disappears from her view as he turns the corner, and it’s only when the telltale sound of the front door opening and then clicking shut fills the room that Loki turns to her. “Has he always had that stick up his ass or did he put one up there today just for me?”

She leans her head back, sighing. “He’s been this way since we got back.”

“You’ve been back for weeks,” Loki says, smirking as he adds, “I thought he’d be a giant ball of sunshine after your little side trip.” She turns to him to send a glare his way. Needing someone to confide in after the events in Vegas, she’d told him about the true nature of her relationship with Steve. And while in hindsight, she should’ve known her best friend could not help but meddle, she was still a touch surprised when he’d admitted in return that he had some hand in setting things in motion. Nevertheless, she’s glad to have someone to talk to about all of this now – even if she is, at present, regretting the decision as she catches the mischievous glint that sparkles in Loki’s eyes. “Did you two have your first little domestic up in the mountains?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. Those three days…” she trails, reminiscing. “Well, they were perfect.”

She isn’t even being hyperbolic. Short as the trip they had decided to take after the event in Milan was, there really isn’t any other word to describe the days she and Steve spent alone together in her cabin in the Alps. With her phone forgotten in the deepest crevice of her luggage, it’s as though time spanned endlessly, allowing them to explore every nook and cranny of the little remote village they found themselves in. And with no one to recognize her, there hadn’t been a need for them to hide. They spent the days walking in and out of the quaint shops, sipping on mulled wine, and stealing kisses as they huddled for warmth. Then as the night rolled around, they would find themselves retiring by the fire, where they would talk and laugh and eventually find their way into each other’s arms again. Those days were nothing short of blissful, and she couldn’t think of a time where she’d felt so happy. So complete.

“What’s changed then?” Loki asks.

She sighs, recalling the exact moment in the car ride back home from the airport where she felt their euphoric little bubble burst right in the backseat of the SUV. “When we got home, his team told us that someone had sent me letters,” she says. “They were similar to the ones my stalker had sent me in the past.”

“Natasha,” Loki says, every trace of his upbeat mood gone as he sits up straighter, grabbing her hand. “Are you alright? If you’re in danger again-”

“I’m okay, Loki,” she says, finding that she truly does mean her words as she squeezes his hand back in reassurance. She’d been paralyzed with fear the first time she’d received those letters, and even more so when that maniac had found a way to corner her in the elevator bank way back when. But things are different now. She’s capable of fighting back, of protecting herself. And now she has Steve, who along with his team, she trusts whole-heartedly to never let anything like that happen to her again. “The guy’s been apprehended. Steve… well, he and his team made sure of it.”

“I’m relieved,” Loki says. “Though I suspect he isn’t.”

She shakes her head, running a hand tiredly over her face. “He’s been… distant?” she says, trying the word out for size. “He’s here, watching me and our surroundings like a hawk, but at the same time it feels like he’s a million miles away.”

“He cares about you. Deeply.”

“And I feel the same way about him,” she says, her answer coming to her almost instantly before she finds herself admitting the one thought that’s been weighing on her since the jet touched down in Teterboro last week. “I just wish we never came home.”

A beat of silence hangs over them before Loki sighs. “Natasha,” he says, “I understand why the two of you have been keeping things under the radar, but… would it really be the worst thing? The two of you out in the open?”

For a moment, she can only stare at her friend, contemplating his question. “I don’t know,” she says eventually.

Full chapter coming soon...

#romanogers #steve rogers #natasha romanoff #so it goes 'verse #Bodyguard AU #always remember us this way #steve x natasha

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sommerregenjuniluft · 1 year

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@jegulus-microfic august 21 - hallway - 1124 words - office AU with intern!Regulus and juniorboss!James (nsfw! in part2)

this one’s for shan @grimjobs <3 heh

Regulus has a love-hate relationship with the supplies room. Or, more specifically, the hallway leading there.

It’s all the way at the fuck all end of the office, past the breakroom and near the lavatories. And Regulus, being the intern, gets sent there for every piss little thing a coworker might be in need of. Oh, Regulus I think I’m out of sticky notes, can you be a darling and get some from the supply room?, or, Regulus the copier is out of paper, or, Regulus is there a spare chair in the supply room? Mine’s so squeaky.

It is, also, precisely across from the Junior boss’s office, and Regulus gets incredibly flustered around James, even if the curtains are covering the huge glass panes, and so, more often than not, Regulus forgets something and has to trudge back all over again.

He knows it’s part of the job and hey, he even gets his steps in every day but what’s still entirely unfair is the way heat shoots up Regulus’ nape the second James looks up from behind his monitor and flashes him a pearly smile.

Regulus nods his head in acknowledgement, cheeks flaring and then ducks into the supply room for an array of markers, pens, blue paper for flyers, a whole fucking paper cutter machine and paper clips, but only the red ones! Sure, Bethany.

He is in the process of checking the idiotically small-printed labels for the box of yellow markers, apparently completely unaware of his surroundings, when suddenly there’s a puff of minty breath against Regulus’ cheek and a warm body skirting past his back, not quite touching but body heat radiating off him like a bloody furnace.

The Junior Boss has naturally warm hands, which Regulus is intimately familiar with since this one insisted on proving that fact when they were out with the colleagues for mulled wine last year before Christmas and Regulus had nearly frozen his fucking fingers off despite gloves. Needless to say, Regulus had gotten warm very quickly after James had stood close with his sweet smile and deep red beanie over tousled hair, cradling his hands in his palms like they were something precious.

“Sorry, love, don’t mind me,” and Regulus leaves an undignified high-pitched sound as he whirls around and comes face to face with messy raven hair and toffee brown eyes behind gold rimmed glasses. Is so hypnotized by the sight up close that his hold goes slack on the pens and paper he’s already found.

“Oh,” James says, hand shooting out to keep the rolling pens from hitting the ground. Grins while he puts one of his palms steadying under Regulus’ hand where he’s now gripping the stack of blue like a lifeline and places the pens back on top of it, “Careful there.”

Regulus’ voice is raspy when he manages a weak, “Thanks.”

James hums in understanding as he extracts himself and it’s low and deep and Regulus swears he can feel the wavelengths of it permeate through the air and penetrate all the layers of skin and muscle in his chest. Lap at the bones and wash right through between the ribs. Coil around his heart, dangerously and then devilishly slink down his spine and pool right in a pit below Regulus’ stomach that seems responsive solely to all things James related in a very biased way.

What comes next is a bit inconceivable and hazy in Regulus’ mind.

Because then James, terrifyingly, decides to step back close again and lean in.

Closer than before and Regulus is tensing, waiting for James to get the thing he’s reaching for from behind Regulus on the shelf but James doesn’t.

Doesn’t move in any regard safe for his eyelids drooping and gaze restlessly darting over Regulus face. Lick his lips and now they’re shiny and wet and Regulus has to look away. Eyes flitting back up to James like he’s being reeled in magnetically and finds their gazes locking.

And then there’s a careful touch at Regulus’ jaw and Regulus tilts his head up and into it and before the breathy noise can entirely leave his mouth James is already swallowing it up, pressing parted lips against Regulus’ with a heavy sigh.

It’s a careful press of lips and it stays like that, measured and controlled, even as James comes back in for another array of soft fluttering kisses. But it’s still wet and with the unhurried leisure their lips stick to each other, with the spit and the slow press and it’s so, so fucking far from decent and appropriate Regulus could cry.

So, really, Regulus is not to blame for the way it draws him tight, riles him up until comes the snap, and it’s in the form of a keen he didn’t even know he could make that sounds a horrifying lot like a mewl.

Which then has James promptly separating them with heavy panting, lips kiss bitten and eyes wild and Regulus would literally rather staple his eyes shut than keep looking at this without being able to do something about it.

James rightens his glasses where they’ve become askew and then his mouth tips into a happy, self-satisfied 100 watt grin, “Come on, I’ll walk you back to your desk,” taking the blue paper packet out of his hands. “Anything else you need from in here?”

And Regulus tries to remember while simultaneously suppressing the urge to throttle him and also trying to get his breathing back under control and blush to fade and hard cock to go down and why is he acting like nothing out of the ordinary just happened? Like this is your usual Monday morning occurrence and not groundbreaking and also a complete disaster waiting to happen?

Helplessly mumbles about the paper cutter machine and then James is balancing that on one defined forearm like it weighs nothing and escorting Regulus back to his desk, chattering his ear off in a chirpy tone that Regulus doesn’t register a thing off.

When James takes a pause to breathe Bethany coincidentally happens to walk past and after one look the old bat asks about her red paper clips, Regulus? which then for some reason prompts Mark to leer over the cubicle wall from across and frown at the lack of yellow marker.

Regulus barely refrains from face-palming, internally chanting and begging for the ground to open up and swallow him and then James next to him is chuckling and making a fucking cooing noise at him. He waves a dismissive hand, “Must’ve slipped your mind, huh?”

The glint in his eyes though is anything but innocent when he leans a little closer, murmuring, “Well, let’s head back and get the rest, shall we?”

———

part 2, they’re nasty fuckin there 🤭

#i dont want to hear a word about the sticky notes there's only so many things one can need at their office desk ok?#jegulus #jegulus microfic #jegulus fic #regulus black x james potter #james potter x regulus black #starchaser #sunseeker #regulus black #james potter #lune’s tiny fic

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reve-de-sang · 8 days

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for @vamptember, Sept. 13: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat (posting a day early bc i'll be away)

(x) A Pygmalion AU. Vampires Armand and Magnus weigh human Lestat’s potential outside a kill room. Armand has doubts. Magnus loves chaos.

“You’ve found another one.”

“It’s uncanny how you always know.”

“It’s your pallor,” Armand said. “They dial it back down. Tonight you look very nearly pink-cheeked. He must be a healthy one.”

Magnus’s lips flinched with a suppressed smile. “Well. I don’t mind saying,” he rasped, rearranging himself in the leather club chair, tapping his cigar in the ashtray. “I have outdone myself this time.”

“Really.”

“Honestly I can’t imagine finding better.”

“Oh, not this again.”

“No! I’m quite serious. Every box checked of course. Fit. Blond. Blue-eyed. That sort of…regal handsomeness…”

Armand sighed meaningfully and swirled his snifter of blood, warm in the palm of his hand.

“But also a combination of beauty, fight, and health that I had given up on finding. Most of all the fight. They’ll generally do anything by day two, but I’ve had this one almost a week and he hasn’t given up.”

“Pride,” Armand sighed.

Magnus frowned. “Drive.”

“Mentally unstable.”

“Well. By now.” Magnus chuckled, and Armand joined him conspiratorially.

“No,” Magnus protested. “It’s just drive, honestly. He’s so stubborn. So angry. Not in the swoon—hard to imagine anyone fighting that in the end—but every other moment. Determined to live, or go out fighting.”

Armand hummed. “I’m almost envious. Sounds fun.”

“You know you prefer yours broken.”

“Fair.” Armand lifted the crystal decanter of blood from its sleek electric warmer. “Top you off?”

Magnus offered his snifter and Armand filled it higher with fresh blood. Magnus sipped and smiled, his narrow tongue licking at his upper lip. “I’ve noticed your particular brand of kill imbues a kind of melancholy to your libations. Would it be fair to say the despondent are your favorite flavor?”

“‘You are what you eat.’ The despair pleases me somehow. And you, always seeking out those cookie cutter men, hoping they’ll fight back. Is it the sadism of crushing these hardy specimens that attracts you to this pattern? Or some twisted hope one will succeed in the fight against you, though I can’t imagine how?”

An unsettling smile stretched across Magnus’s face, revealing his toothless gums save his two fangs. “I want a champion. And Armand? This one is easily the best, no contest. I mean to turn him.”

Armand went as still as if time has stopped. “Magnus.”

“I’ve never had a companion in all these centuries. Not even the companionship of a maker, as you know.” Armand nodded. “I’ve been looking for the perfect one, and I’ve found him.”

Armand stared at him; the long silence between them would have been preternatural to any human observer.

“Magnus,” Armand began. “…You say you have finally found one you can’t break. And this is the one you will make into a companion. Against his will. Yet what you describe sounds more like…a pet. That you must lock up when unsupervised, lest he kill you. Are you looking for him to kill you?”

Magnus’s laughter rattled in his thin chest. “Although I do love the idea of danger again after all these years, no. This is about perfection: I could not have sculpted him better myself were I an artist, and were I a god to give him life.

“And who knows what he will become? The dark gift itself may win him over. It has its own alchemy. I love a challenge, and I have nothing but time.”

“Do you? The centennial is approaching. Akasha and Enkil would expect him in attendance. Do you really think they won’t send your boytoy up like a torch within seconds of meeting him? And you with him, for the insult of his making?”

“Please. Once he’s in the blood I can bring him to heel. I will present him at court and he will be a jewel that all will envy.”

Armand drummed his nail tips against the crystal of his glass, then set it aside on the table adjacent his armrest. He leaned forward slightly. “We barely care for each other, but I have grown used to you, friend. This is your reality check: I know you have a very exacting standard, and this one in particular has,” Armand waved a hand, “qualities.”

“You have no idea.”

Armand rolled his eyes. “Despite that? This is a passing fancy. Take another week, enjoy it. Then put it down and add it to your trophy pile. Otherwise after all these years you’ll be like the befuddled dog that finally caught the car; I don’t think your search is one that was meant to have an end. This will not satisfy, and you may well die for it, by his hand or the queen’s.”

Magnus set his own drink down sharply. “God but life has become boring, Armand! Do you not feel it! I think I would welcome the risk of death. To feel alive for a change.” Magnus slipped his hand into his inner coat pocket for his phone, and thumbed through his photos. “Let me show you what I mean.” An odd, soft smile bent his wizened mouth as he paused on one picture. He offered the phone to Armand. “To go out with style—that’s the dream.”

Armand slipped the phone from Magnus’s hand. Considered the photo.

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

Armand seemed infinitesimally pinker in the face than before, but it might have been a trick of the fire in the establishment’s hearth. Armand shrugged one shoulder slightly. “…Oh.”

“Yes, that was my feeling on the matter.” Magnus sucked on his cigar.

“May I?” Armand asked, thumb hovering over the screen to flip through Magnus’s gallery.

“Please do.”

He was silent for a moment as he browsed—there really were quite an array of photographs—swiping slowly, pausing occasionally. “…You really are quite perverse, Magnus.”

“I know.”

Armand pinched his fingers to zoom in, out. “Such a risk, banking on him coming to heel.”

“Well not entirely to heel, I hope.”

Armand ran a thumb over his lower lip, grazed one fang. He swiped leisurely through a few more pictures with his other hand. “…Would you like to bet on it? His passing at court?”

Magnus began to smile once more—the evening was possibly a record for smiles within the past century. “A wager. Life gets more exciting by the moment.”

“You have only three weeks until the centennial gathering. He has his charms, yes, but he will be completely green, will likely be an unruly child, and probably offensive and derisive about our culture. What is his provenance, by the way?”

If anything, Magnus’s smile increased. Unsettling. “Poor. Rural. Family was rich a generation ago, so they have pretensions to grandeur, but lost everything back in the crash like everyone else. So by our standards, and certainly Akasha’s: quite uncultured. He’s currently an actor.”

“Jesus, and you know how emphatically I say this, Christ.”

“Isn’t it delightful?”

Armand’s look was withering. He slid through a few more photos. “The terms of the bet will be—oh my.” Armand stilled on a picture. Casually crossed his legs.

Magnus glanced at the phone. “Oh you’ll like that series.”

Armand slanted his eyes to Magnus. “Are there videos?”

“Private folder. Possibly another time.”

“Hm.”

“Actually had to give him a transfusion after that. He cries so beautifully; I’d gotten a little excited. Took forever to hose the room down.”

“You’re so elaborate,” Armand sighed, actually raising his eyebrows at the next few pictures. “I don’t know where you find the energy.”

“Give that back,” Magnus smirked, holding out his hand for the phone, and Armand relinquished it.

“The terms of the bet,” Armand restated. “Now: obviously you are going to die on November 1, and will thereafter be unavailable to make good on the wager.” Magnus laughed. “So we’ll need to bet on something just before that. Ah.” Armand smiled. “The ball, of course. October 31. Akasha and Enkil won’t be in attendance, so you won’t die immediately, but you will still be a laughingstock.”

“And by what metric would we judge that?”

“True, you’ve never been popular,” Armand mused. Magnus was unoffended—he took pride in his black sheep status.

“So…Marius and Pandora. If they take a shine to him, you’ve won the bet,” Armand’s mouth twisted, sour.

“Oh, Armand.”

“Shut up. He is an insufferable gatekeeper when it comes to Akasha. This is perfect. We’ll leave it to Marius: if Marius chastises you—or worse—then you’ve lost. If he simply shuns you or is ambivalent, then you’ve lost. Your fledgling is to be a “jewel,” remember? To win it must be nothing less than endorsement.”

“Stakes?”

“Hmmm. If you lose, I think I’d like to spend the rest of that evening and that following day in the private company of your fledgling. He does have…qualities.”

“But it would’ve been our final hours together,” Magnus said with dry sarcasm. “How sad.”

“Better make the preceding days count.”

Magnus chuckled. “Fine.”

“And if you win?”

“Well, obviously I would live,” Magnus said. “And I would have the best companion of our kind. And the triumph of showing up all the pompous vampires who have unanimously looked down on me since my creation. Present company excepted, of course.” Armand gave a nod. “So I don’t know that I could want for anything more. Winning would simply be its own satisfaction.”

“How boring for me.”

“Perhaps I will call in a favor at some later date?”

Armand drummed his fingers on the tight leather of his club chair. “Nothing extravagant. But yes. If you win.”

—-

Just as the sun was rising, Armand received a text from Magnus; no words, only a photo. Magnus’s fledgling lay dazed on a bloodsoaked bed far more richly appointed than the white-tiled kill room featured in many of Magnus’s photos.

The pure blue of his fledgling’s eyes had iridesced in the vampiric change to take on an additional slight pale violet quality. He seemed to have been washed and groomed before his turning, though he had previously been beautiful even disheveled and abused. Armand knew better than to think Magnus had applied a filter; of course his fledgling’s complexion had now become luminous.

“Congratulations,” Armand texted, and lay down to sleep.

#vamptember #iwtv #prompt: dead dove do not eat #lestat de lioncourt #magnus #armand #implied graphic non-con #speech in « » denotes telepathic speech #admittedly not hardcore dead dove #essence of dead dove #a soup flavored by dead dove. like a bay leaf.

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thgfanfictionlibrary · 3 months

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E Rated Fics Masterlist (37)

Part 1-Part 25 / Part 26 / Part 27 / Part 28 / Part 29 / Part 30 / Part 31 / Part 32 / Part 33 / Part 34 / Part 35 / Part 36

Created: March 17th, 2024

Last Checked:-----

The common thread that lies between you and me-angylinni (ao3) Summary: Katniss Everdeen has only loved one man in her life, but she's married to another. They can't stay apart and they can't be together. The Concubine-Alliswell (ao3) Summary: "I hope to present my husband, the Duke, with a Concubine" Winter approaches, and the Duchess refuses to spend all the cold winter months in her Husband's Winter House. When the idea of bringing a Concubine to keep her husband occupied and herself free of her marital responsibilities, the fate of a Kingdom is decided. The Drifters-Diana_Flynn (ao3) Summary: Peeta Mellark was the cookie cutter popular boy in his small town. Smart, quarterback, and dating the most beautiful girl in school. But his life was nothing but lies that made him feel hollow inside. On one hot summer day, it took two strangers coming into town, one a grey eyed girl, to feel his heart beat again and teach him what is really valuable. The Fall Guy-atetheredmind (ao3) Summary: We all make choices. Four years ago, Katniss and Peeta both made a choice that irrevocably changed the course of their lives. Now, Peeta’s back, and they have to face those choices, and each other. The Feint-atetheredmind (ao3) Summary: Peeta Mellark won his games single-handedly at the age of 15. Six years later, he must act as mentor to Katniss Everdeen in the 74th Hunger Games, where they learn there is more than one type of game at play. The Game-amelia_day (ao3) Summary: Delly Cartwright has always loved fairy-tales, and dreams of her own happy ending. If only her and Thresh Brookes could get on the same page. Part of The Panem Nightlocks Series (The Bet) The Hustler-Diana_Flynn (ao3) Summary: Sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen has walked the fine line between good and bad since the death of her parents. Her faith shattered, she pushes the sisters at her Catholic school at every turn, but is responsible at home to counteract her reckless Aunt Effie. It only takes one change to push Katniss over the edge. And that change is Aunt Effie's new boy toy Peeta Mellark. The Kitty Ranch-Diana_Flynn (ao3) Summary: Katniss Everdeen is not one to look back at the choices she makes, especially if it means providing for the only person she loves - her sister Prim. This includes being a prostitute at the Kitty Ranch in Nevada. Her secret life and world are shaken when the rich media darling Peeta Mellark comes walking into her life. Modern day AU. The Other Side of the Glass-Demona424 (ao3) Summary: Having finally ended a disastrous relationship, Katniss reunites with her friends after a long absence from their lives. They decide to take a trip to her father's cabin to catch up and things get awkward for her when the best friend she's always been in love with catches her in a compromising position. The Sun Thief-bubblegum1425 (ao3) Summary: In the land of Panem, over a decade ago, the royal house Mellark was overthrown by the usurper Coriolanus Snow. Though the terror-filled reign of Snow and his sons has now nearly extinguished the last spark of hope in Panem's people, one boy with a bow and his Merry Band seek to restore the faith and overthrow the King. An Everlark take on Robin Hood. Fantasy AU

#e #masterlist #everlark #everlark fanfiction #thg #thg fanfiction #e masterlist

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piratemousey · 5 months

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Gale and You

A modern Gale SFF AU

Gale/Y/N

Back From the Eternity

You rise from bed with one foot sliding into your slipper and the other lands on the flat carpet. The knocking comes again, urgent. The dark room tells you that it's the middle of the night, a crash of thunder reminds you a storm appeared suddenly off the coast and was meant to drown the small town where you live.

You turn on the lamp by your bed, a quick glance in the mirror slanted against the wall there. Your home is the same cookie cutter home as the rest in the town of Mandrake. A home owned and furnished by Weaving Labs Incorporated, your employer. While a company town wasn't ideal, it let you do your work and it let you meet brilliant, exciting people.

As you cross to the hall, the lightning illuminates the archway to the kitchen and the sliding doors to the small back yard.

You hurry on your toes, concerned that there was an accident at the lab or an emergency in the neighborhood. Your pajamas are comfortable but loose, something for the cool fall evenings of northeastern Massachusetts.

With quick fingers and a rapid heartbeat you turn on the porch light, leaning to look through the pain of glass.

At first you can't take in the person before you. He's so changed from your last meeting.

Gale Dekarios

Gale is braced against the doorframe, his chestnut brown hair hanging down around his face. You can see his breathing is agitated as if he'd exerted himself. When he looks at you, rain streams down his haunted face.

The last time you saw Gale he was hovering in the open hole he'd made in the ceiling of the lab. His skin was glowing blue, his eyes a pure white light.

He'd chosen to leave, to explore the universe with his new powers. It's not like he owed you anything. It had only been some light flirting, a coffee, and a few soft kisses in the break room.

Stolen moments in the long hours of your research into the strange electromagnetic phenomenon of the town of Mandrake Falls.

You open the door, the shock keeping you from forming words. Gale's clothes hang from him in stress. He's no longer glowing. In fact, Gale looks worn out.

“Gale,” You finally say.

“Y/N,” Gale replies. The same honeyed voice emerges from his lips which once whispered close to your ear as his hand cupped your cheek.

If people want to get the steamy stuff, I'll post it.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 gale #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #bg3 au #fanfic #quick fic #my first y/n #tumblr exclusive #gender neutral y/n #gender neutral reader

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lullabyes22-blog · 7 months

Text

Mal de Mer - Ch: 3 - Treasure (Part I)

Summary:

A high-seas honeymoon. Two adversaries, bound by matrimony. A future full of peril and possibility. And a word that neither enjoys adding to their lexicon: Compromise.

War was simpler business…

Part of the 'Forward But Never Forget/XOXO' AU. Can be read as a standalone series.

Thank you for the graphics @lipsticksandmolotovs<3

Mal de Mer on AO3

Mal de Mer on FFnet

CHAPTER

I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - VIII

꧁꧂

How can you just leave me standing? Alone in a world that's so cold Maybe I'm just too demanding Maybe I'm just like my father, too bold?

~ "When Doves Cry" - Prince

The SS Woe Betide's promenade deck is a study in sun-drenched elegance.

The broad stretch of honey-gold planks is polished to a high shine. Floor-to-ceiling windows run the length of the walkway, their glass etched with sunburst motifs. Behind the glass, the water is dappled into a spray of gold and diamonds. The waves, rolling in drowsy combers of lapis lazuli and sapphire, call to mind a treasurebox tipped sideways: all its secrets spilling across the seabed.

A pirate's dream come true.

Silco’s outfit fits right in. He's clad in a loose red shirt with the sleeves rolled to the forearms. A worsted black waistcoat, long and narrow, drapes his angular shoulders and sways with his stride. His trousers, matching the jacket, are tailored in the style of sailor's breeches: unpleated, and tapering at the calves. A pair of scuffed boots, pointed at the toes, complete the ensemble.

The effect is flattering, but ruthlessly functional. He looks ready to cross the gangplank to a pirate's cutter.

His smile, when he glances sidelong at Mel, is piratical too: full of teeth, and no good intent.

"My dear," he drawls, "I asked you to lose the chiffon."

"This," Mel says, "is tulle."

"The difference?"

"A world of it."

"And yet the effect's the same."

His scrutiny is a physical paring down. Mel, not a woman given to blushes, feels a smarting heat.

There is, she tells herself, nothing wrong with her day-gown. It's the plainest in her wardrobe. A square-necked cream frock, the hem ending at mid-calf. The bodice is a high-waisted, empire-line affair. The only adornments are the delicate golden embroidery edging the diaphanous sleeves. It's a demure look: a far cry from the haute-couture she usually favors—the ones Silco dubs Vehicles of Voyeurism. Even her calfskin boots, ankle-length and plain, are the closest she's got to seafaring. She'd chosen them, and the matching leather belt, for their durability.

Whatever her husband's plans, she'd rather not lose a pair of Tanzanite-studded Manolovas to the briny depths.

Silco, head tilted, appraises her footwear. "Are those Topside's idea of boots?"

"They're called oxfords."

"They're a disgrace."

"You're not a shoemaker!" Exasperated, Mel smooths out her skirts. "I've never seen a pair like yours before. And my father was an admiral."

"You mean, mercenary."

"My point is: I have spent a lifetime on ships. I know seamen's boots. Those—" she gestures at Silco's, "—are anything but."

"They're Fissure-boots. We call them 'kickers'." He rotates his ankle to show her the sole. "The undersides are covered in rivets. For grip. They're useful for slippery surfaces. But if you snag them on a rail, or trip over a hatch cover, you can slip them off in three shakes of a rat's tail. All the better to run."

"Run from what?"

A ghost of a smile. "What do you think?"

"Enforcers."

"Enforcers aren't the only disasters belowground. Temblors. Fires. Cave-ins. We have all sorts." Musingly, he regards his boots. "Running's a way of life for us."

Mel thinks of her first descent into the Fissures. The smoke-clogged streets that denied visibility. The gaping pits of rubble that threatened each step. The clammy grip of moisture that slicked each surface. Everywhere she'd looked, she’d seen the endless scars of Topside's neglect. Afterward, the waft of destruction had clung to her skin. Like the phantom sensation of Silco's hand on hers, and the insinuating thread of his voice in her ear:

"Watch your step. Rough roads in Zaun."

She'd wondered how the Fissurefolk withstood their lot. Their suffering seemed unendurable: the weight of it, the sheer, crushing tragedy. No matter where her thoughts turned, it was always there: the knowledge that her city, the jewel of Progress, had been rotting away below her feet.

The people, trapped beneath, dying by degrees.

In those days, she'd been unnerved by that strange and alien world. Unnerved, too, by Silco. The duality of him was at once alluring and repulsive. His elegance was a facade, as thin as the film of iridescent oil floating on Zaun's waters. Beneath, there was nothing but a ravenous dark.

And yet, she'd found herself returning. To the dark, and to him. And each time, the city's alienness seemed to peel away. The Fissurefolk, in all their idiosyncrasies, morphed from feral enigmas to fellow human beings. Even Silco, for all his unsettling contradictions, went from a terrible specter to a thrilling challenge.

A man, with his own stories. His own heartbreaks.

Bit by bit, his world had become hers. He'd made it so: with colorful tales about the murals peeking between the subterranean ruins at Factorywood. With sips of fizzy green lager brewed in the sunless cellars beneath the catacombs in Entresol. With strolls, arm-in-arm, along the pyrite studded rock formations that rimmed the shantytowns in the Sumps. He'd taught her the dances popular among the Fissurefolk—the Sumpside Waltz, the Drainpipe Fandango, the Lazy River Lope—and the meanings behind their twists and turns. He'd invited her to the most surreal festivals—the Equinox Feast, the Night of the Veiled Lady—and imparted the significance behind their customs. He'd fed her delicacies from the food carts dotting the street corners—spiced mushroom stew, glazed eel, pickled beets—and shared the recipes behind their unique flavors.

And all the while, his voice had woven a spell. The longer she’d listened, the less Zaun seemed a hellhole, but a hidden gem. Each facet, a winking, ever-shifting kaleidoscope of human life—one as rich as any jewelbox in Piltover's Ecliptic Vaults.

Treasure, Mel thinks, isn't always gold.

"Perhaps," she dares, "I'll buy myself a pair of 'kickers'."

His brow quirks. "You'd be in for a rude surprise."

"Oh?"

"Our best boots are cobbled at the Commercia Fantastica. All the way down in the Black Lanes. You'd never find your way out."

"You'll show me."

"Will I?" His mismatched eyes take on a shrewd gleam. "And how will you compensate me?"

"By being your wife."

"Is that the new currency, now?"

"The press certainly say so."

Her mind is already sketching out a blueprint. She'll speak to one of her contacts in the publishing industry: a gazetteer of Fissure origins. They'll contrive a series: maybe a pictorial. All the splendor of the Commercia Fantastica, faithfully rendered in glossy print. Piltover's glitterati will have their first glimpse into the heart of Zaun's manufacturing district. It will be a reminder that their cornucopia—be it custom-made or uniform—does not issue from an orifice hidden in clouds of smut. It materializes from an epicenter of artisanship: a beating, booming, pulsating hub.

One that's only a hop, skip, and jump away.

If previous efforts are a litmus for success, then one photograph of Mel in the latest 'kickers' will spark a stampede for the bootsellers' doors. In the surge, the adjacent markets will benefit: textiles, silversmiths and jewelers. And once the novelty wears off, the lull will be a soft landing for honest Fissure tradesmen eager to partner with Piltover's guilds. The latter, inured to the mercurial whims of high fashion, will now demand durability rather than design. And the former, accustomed to the rigors belowground, will find the Piltover's middle-class an easier breed to please.

All that's necessary is a few photographs, and a dash of goodwill.

A small price, Mel thinks, for shared prosperity.

"You are," Silco says, with a degree of wryness, "scheming."

"Takes one to know one."

"I never scheme. I merely plan ahead."

"Same difference."

"Scheming requires an adversary. Planning, a vision."

"And what's yours?"

A corner of his mouth curls. "Good try."

Mel sighs. He is always maddeningly closemouthed about his agenda. It will take more than pretty prattle to pry the details loose. The only clues she can glean are from his choice of attire—and his critique of her boots.

Whatever his plan, it involves getting their feet wet.

Mel is wary. But she knows better than to fill the silence with futile queries. He proffers his arm; she takes it. Together, they stroll down the promenade deck. After a week confined to the cabin, the sea air is a heady tonic. The loose weave of her dress is a kiss against her skin. She is still lit up like a klieg-light: her body hot and hyperaware after the morning's exertions.

She seldom, as rule, makes love in the daytime. To her way of thinking, the act, in sunlight, loses some of its artistry. Everything reduced to the crudest mechanics. Every flaw in full relief. Even Jayce had been his loveliest in the twilight. All shadow, all suggestion.

With Silco, daylight is fast becoming her favorite hour. Like the sun-warmed vista, she is all sensation.

Speculatively, Mel steals him a glance. If it weren't the height of lunacy, she'd consider dragging him straight back to bed. To hell with the guests. To hell with his plans. They can return to their suite, and bolt the door. Spend the rest of the day, and the night, and the next morning, in a state of well-earned debauchery.

But the set of Silco's features warns her that's a losing battle.

It's not tension, exactly. More a dark anticipation. Like the way he'd looked, at Zaun's Riverside Harbor, when they'd first met. He'd known then that Zaun would drag itself out of the depths. And Mel, meeting his eyes, had known too.

He'd been certain then. Now, the certainty is a riptide. And Mel, who's never been swept off her feet, can't help but be tugged along.

She's grateful for her boots. She suspects she'll need the grip.

They cross the promenade. Silco’s stroll is measured: a mark of ownership rather than a man marking time. Barely a week's span, and the ship is already seems to belong to him. The crew, at his barest footfall, leap to attention. Even the Captain, an irascible old seadog, treats him with a distance verging on deference. Mel remembers the same phenomenon on her father's ship: the Cry Havoc. His crew were seasoned hands: calloused minds with checkered pasts. They'd spent a lifetime at sea, and encountered their fair share of the unfathomable. They were also superstitious, and possessed a healthy fear of the uncanny.

Silco, a figment of the fathoms, is uncanny through and through.

In a different life, Mel fancies, he'd be the silhouette idling on sharp rocks, his smoky voice pitched to wooing: Come, come, and never be lonely again.

Her husband, in this one, catches the eye of a passing steward. A nod is all it takes: the man turns on his heel and disappears belowdeck.

"Where is he going?" Mel asks.

"To fetch something."

"Fetch what?"

"What I've asked him to."

Another nod at a nearby sailor. The man hastens to the foredeck. There, Mel can hear a skiff—one of Piltover's quicksilvers—revving its engines. Readying to go where, Mel cannot begin to guess. They're miles off the coast. The nearest harbor—the Wuju port—is three hours away.

Unless Silco means to sail his guests directly to shore, his destination is a mystery.

Then again, she thinks, isn’t it always?

His palm cups her elbow. "Mel."

She stirs from her reverie. "What?"

"I have a request."

"A request?"

"Yes."

His hand, settling on her hip, guides her to a halt. He's not smiling. But there's a heat in his stare. It's not an easy heat to name. It's not desire, or even hunger. It's something deeper: a pull it takes everything to resist.

"You must," he says, "make me a promise."

"You expect me to make promises, when you won't tell me a thing?"

"Only this: you're in for a surprise or two."

"Silco—"

"I've a plan. Not a pretty one. And it'll mean a bit of rough sailing. But what's true of storms is true of marriage." His mouth twitches. "There's no winners. Only survivors."

"You aren't doing a good job at selling this."

"I'm not trying to sell it. I'm only telling you that, when we're out there—in the ballroom, on the high sea—don't run."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because it's instinct. Trenchers run for survival. It's in our blood. Medardas run from loss. It's in yours." His eyes search hers. "I don't fault your blood. I only ask you to remember. When the winds start picking up, and the waters get choppy, your instinct will be to take cover. But the storm's not what you think. And if you're going to stay on course, you can't retreat. You have to see this through." His thumb strokes her hipbone. "Promise."

"Even if you run us aground?"

"Do you think you've married a fool?"

"Do you think you're married to one?"

Their stares lock. The silence is charged. It is not challenge, but a quiet recognition of each others' roles. She is not a woman to expose herself to the raw elements. He is not a man to sit back and let the tides dictate his course. Their relationship has been a negotiation, from the first to the last. Each taking a turn at the helm, and then trading it away.

Now, he's asking her to—what?

Trade, or give it up?

"If," Mel says, "there's a danger—"

"There isn't."

"But you believe I'll run."

"Not you. But the woman in there—" he tips his chin toward the ballroom, "—isn't the one who waxes poetic about painting me nude in the sunlight. She's a Medarda first, second, and last. And a Medarda always has an escape route."

"The woman in there—" Mel follows his chin, and sees, through the frosted glass, a knot of swaying silhouettes, "—is a Medarda by birth. She's married to you by choice. And I can't keep my promise, if I don't know what that choice means."

"Then I'll ask again." His eyes hold hers. "Trust me."

"Trust you? Or the man who's warned me not to run?"

"That's the point."

"Is it?"

"Trust that, whatever happens, the man you've married is the same man in that ballroom." His palm spans the small of her back. "I've no alter egos, Mel. Just moments where I show teeth, and moments where I hide them. And right now, I've a great deal to hide. But the endgame is the same as your schemes for my city: a step toward something greater."

"For Zaun, and Piltover?"

"I wouldn't put it that way."

"How would you put it?"

His mouth, mere inches from hers, crooks. "Compromise."

Mel's pulse skitters.

It's a hard bargain to swallow. A harder choice to make. And she, who's made a fine art of tipping the scales, knows that both are equally vital, if this union is to have a prayer of survival. And yet the urge to break away, to force a confrontation, is surging.

She's used to his obliqueness. She's not, and will never, be used to his unpredictability.

When he says Don't run, he means Hold your ground. When he says Surprise, he means Beware.

And when he says Compromise, he means, in his own words: Survive.

Then he says, "Trust me."

Which, she's learning, is his shorthand for, Trust yourself.

Mel's mouth pinches. Trust. Doubt. These are two sides of the same coin. His past, and hers, laid bare without veils. Moments like this, she's reminded of the enormous gamble she's taken by marrying him. She knows, from her own experience, how quickly trust can curdle into the opposite. And she knows, too, that doubt can devour the sturdiest edifice.

It had, after all, devoured her parents' marriage.

Ambessa Medarda, no sentimentalist, had not married for love. Her choice was pragmatic, and it was prudent. From a broad swathe of suitors, ranging from bluebloods to brutes, she'd selected Mel's father, a swarthy, scarred captain from the Targonian Isles. Known, simply, as Aziz, he'd possessed a devious head for deals, and a deft tongue for wooing. His clan were descended from a line of seafaring mercenaries. Over the centuries, they'd carved a bloody path on a shifting sea of wars, alliances, and compromises.

Aziz had met Ambessa during a trading venture. It had been, by all accounts, an explosive collision.

Ambessa had admired the way he squared his debts with a bladesman's exacting precision, and wielded his real blade with a cutthroat's clarity. He, in turn, was taken by her ruthless pragmatism, and her cold-eyed resolve.

There'd been no need, in the end, to seek approval from either clan. The match was mutually advantageous: her riches, and his ships, would forge a dynasty.

Theirs was not, by any metric, a love-match. Yet Mel remembers the heat, the intensity, and the sheer physicality of her parents' union. With Aziz, Ambessa became, despite her hardness, a creature of feeling. And Aziz, for all his wily ways, became a man of sentiment.

They'd quarreled often, publicly. They'd butted heads over business, and brawled over trifles. But they'd also made up in the same fashion: two titans, clashing in a storm.

Mel, since girlhood, knew never to knock on her parents' bedchamber door when she heard raised voices.

She'd witnessed the aftermath, once. After a particularly savage row, Ambessa had stormed from their marital suite, and headed for the stables. Aziz, stalking soundlessly after, had caught up with her halfway there. In the middle of the courtyard, they'd fought anew. Aziz, seizing her waist, had swung her in. Ambessa, kicking out, had knocked his legs from under him. Together, they'd fallen into the thatch of wildflowers behind the copse of cypress trees.

Their cries were not, Mel had realized with a dawning horror, cries of pain.

They'd been so preoccupied, they hadn't noticed her creeping closer. They'd not seen her stare, through the screen of foliage, as their fierce struggles devolved into a fiercer embrace. And as they did, a surreal alchemy took place: Ambessa, all wildfire and iron, began to melt. Aziz, all seaspray and stone, began to yield.

Mel, unable to tear her eyes away, saw the exact moment they transformed. A moment before, they'd been two warring elements. A moment later, they were one. And the power of it, the raw, unmitigated passion: it was a force beyond the comprehension of an eight-year-old girl.

That day, Mel sometimes thinks, is when she'd learnt that the strongest forces can be unmade by desire.

Love, fear, fury: they were not, as she'd childishly believed, discrete entities. They were all part of a single current, ebbing and flowing, and changing course with the tides.

Later, much later, her parents had subsided into a languid sprawl. Ambessa's head, pillowed on her husband's shoulder. Aziz's fingers, stirring through his wife's curls. Their bodies, twined, were a study in drowsy contentment.

"Never leave me," Aziz had whispered.

"Why should I," Ambessa had purred, "when I've already cut out your heart?"

"That you have. Now, it's yours."

Ambessa's lips, curving, had found his throat. "Then remember, Schatze, I'll do worse to any woman who dares to claim it."

Schatze.

That was her private designation for him. Treasure.

Her one and only.

And she'd meant it, Mel thinks now. Meant it in the way a warrior, who's seen a thousand battles, will fight her last. She'd fought him, and he'd fought her, and they'd taken shelter in each other. Over and over. For twenty years, their marriage was the stuff of legend: a dynastic alliance, and a private whirlwind. They'd begotten two children, lost two more before birth, and spawned a military empire.

Until their union, with the same suddenness as their collision, came undone.

Aziz had, during one of Ambessa's war-campaigns, chosen a mistress. This, in itself, was not unheard of. The men of the Targonian line were notoriously philandering, and the woman of the Medarda clan were notoriously pragmatic. Ambessa, who'd not only kept her own paramours, but had changed them with the frequency of a Piltovan noblewoman changing her gloves, had never begrudged her husband his dalliances. She'd even handpicked a few herself, including the mistress Aziz so doted upon.

The choice had proven fatal.

She was a pretty thing, Mel remembers. Pale as a lily, and shrewd as a serpent. She'd beguiled Aziz with her beauty, and bound him with her wits. In the span of months, her hold on him grew implacable. By the time Ambessa, returning from a year-long absence, realized what had happened, the damage was done.

She'd discovered Aziz gone, along with three-fifths of their battleships.

Ambessa was not a woman prone to tears. Now, her fury was a black inferno. She'd raged, and she'd razed, and she'd sworn to see the mistress decapitated, with her golden head on a pike. Her pursuit of the wayward pair had been relentless, and the carnage, legendary. She'd burnt villages to the ground. She'd sunk fleets to the bottom of the sea.

And when, finally, she'd had the chance to close her fist around her husband's neck... it was too late.

Aziz had succumbed to a tropical fever. He'd been bedridden and delirious when his ship was waylaid by Ambessa's fleet. The mistress, by then, had already fled with whatever riches she could carry.

When Ambessa had stormed into her husband's cabin, Aziz, on the verge of death, had mustered a crooked smile.

"My lioness," he'd rasped, "have you come to finish the job?"

Ambessa's fury, like a house of cards, had collapsed at the sight of him. She'd flung her scimitar aside, and fallen to her knees at her husband's bedside. His ramblings—of repentance, of devotion, of the children he'd left behind—had been shushed by her kisses. The entire night, she'd sat vigil, cajoling and bargaining and finally, begging.

To no avail.

Aziz had perished at dawn. He'd died, as he'd lived, with a smile on his lips.

For Ambessa, the fearsome general who'd won a hundred battles, this was the first true defeat. But she'd not wept, or wailed, or rent her hair. She'd only kissed Aziz's forehead, and smoothed his lids shut. Then, with a composure born of pure iron, she'd ordered his body laid out onto a wooden funeral bier, and floated out to sea, before it was set ablaze in the Targonian custom with five dozen flaming arrows.

When the sun had set, and the smoke had dissipated, she'd hefted her scimitar and turned her eyes to the horizon.

There are a thousand and one ways a Medarda avenges a slight.

Aziz's mistress would learn them all.

And soon.

Ambessa's troops had cornered the woman, in a tiny port town along the southern coast. By then, she'd spent every last coin she'd stolen from her dead lover, and had nothing left to offer in her defense. Not that coin would've made a difference. When Ambessa, flanked by her honor-guard, arrived at the tavern where her quarry was hiding, there'd been no mercy, and no negotiation. The woman, bound and gagged, was dragged to the center of town, and flung at the feet of her former benefactress.

"For my Schatze," Ambessa had vowed, "I'll make this slow."

And she did.

In front of the entire town, she'd cut out the woman's tongue, and plucked out her eyes. She'd hacked her fingers and her toes. She'd flayed her skin, and slit open her chest. And as the woman's life bled out, Ambessa had at last carved out her heart.

It was, in its ghastly way, a fitting recompense.

In the years afterward, Ambessa had grown harder. More ruthless. The light that once shone in her eyes—that strange, fierce light, whenever she'd looked at her husband—had flickered, and faded away. She'd gone on to wage numberless wars. She'd had lovers by the score. She'd built a legacy, and an empire.

But her husband, she never replaced.

Schatze.

She'd still call him that, whenever she reminisced. The endearment was its own admission; the sentiment, its own confession.

Ambessa Medarda did not marry for love. But she'd loved, and lost, nonetheless.

Schatze.

Mel, in the heart of herself, knows the word. It is worth its weight in gold—and the poorest possible investment. Men, as a rule, are faithless. Even the ones who seem, in the sunlight, like perfect princelings. And sharks, as a law, never stop swimming. Even if the water's blue for miles.

To trust one is to invite hurt. And to trust the other is to invite teeth.

Mel knows the price of a life-bitten heart.

And yet, in the depths of passion, she trusts Silco with hers.

Because, in the afterglow, languid and spent, she sometimes calls him Schatze, too.

Now, Mel meets Silco's stare. His eyes, even at their softest, hold an edge. But she senses no hidden blade. Only his palm, cradling the base of her spine. Only his body, a hairsbreadth from hers. And his words, in the space between: Trust me.

A choice, not a compromise.

Mel, slowly, nods.

"You'd better deliver,” she says. “I'm not sure my boots can handle anything worse than the waves."

"If you'd heeded my advice—"

"Don't."

Her tone brooks no argument. In turn, his humor melts.

He steps back, and bows. It's not a courtly gesture. It's like a wolf acknowledging a packmate. Mel, who's seen a hundred bows, is surprised by the sincerity of this one. It's a subtle, almost invisible dip. But she sees, in its execution, trust.

He, who is never truly vulnerable, is exposing the nape of his neck.

"Shall we?" He straightens with a small smile. "The parasites await."

"The parasites are our guests." Mel slips her hand into the crook of his elbow. "I hope you're ready to play the host."

His smile grows "Are you forgetting who I am?"

He stalks toward the ballroom door. His shadow, elongated by the sunlight, is a knife.

And Mel, her heart suddenly in her throat, knows this: She cannot run.

Even if, by a sudden inexplicable compulsion, she wants to.

The ballroom is an idyll of Art Deco delights.

A high vaulted ceiling, inlaid with mosaics of sea-nymphs, arches overhead. A chandelier, dangling like a glittering pendulum, sends a nimbus of refracted light across each polished surface. The floor is a checkered parquet, alternating in shades of teak and rosewood. In the far-corner, a circular bar-island of carved cherrywood serves an array of spirits. A sunken dancefloor, honeycombed in a tessellation of rose marble, is ringed by a quartet of brass-trimmed alcoves. Inside, frosted glass windows, edged with intricate filigree patterns, frame different views of the blue horizon.

Waitstaff bustle with trays of champagne flutes and silver-domed trays of hors d'oeuvres. The guests, in their daytime finery, are milling about. All seem mystified by the ship's anchorage. No doubt whispers have already begun stirring: mutiny, sabotage, ransom.

At Silco and Mel's entrance, heads swivel. The conversation eddies into silence.

Mel thinks: It's like the moment before a battle.

She gives herself a quick mental inventory. Dress: immaculate. Persona: impeccable. Expression: impassive.

A soldier, Ambessa liked to say, is only as good as their armor.

Silco's hand, finding hers, imparts a squeeze: Ready?

Mel squeezes back. Always.

Then, falling away, they diverge to different ends of the room.

It is their formula: tried and true. He hates to be tethered. She hates to be steered. So they meet, and part, and find each other again. Two ships crossing the same sea, with a hundred currents swirling beneath.

And between them: the fulcrum of their cities' fates.

Silco drifts soundlessly to the bar. The crowd parts as he crosses. Mel, watching, marvels at the smoothness of his gait. His body, like a blade, cuts its way implacably through the tide. Peeling it back, layer by layer, until all the pretense fall away. She notes who shrinks back, who stands their ground, who dares to come closer. In their body-language, she reads volumes: curiosity, contempt, caution.

The Eye of Zaun has that effect. Even among the constellations of power, he exudes his own. It's nothing to do with size or swagger. It is simply that his presence, in any room, becomes a gravity well. The most ambitious—eager for a taste of danger—drift closer. The most prudent—wary of his reputation—keep their distance.

Silco, in turn, exudes a usual glacial calm: his eyes taking in everything and giving away nothing.

In that, Mel thinks, he is nothing like Jayce.

Jayce, a born idealist, radiated human warmth. It was a private foible and a public asset: his shining smile and his sheer, stubborn, indomitable belief in Progress. In the beginning, Mel had been charmed his capacity for optimism. As his business partner, she'd seen the way his earnest goodwill thawed the frostiest investors. As his lover, she'd been seduced by his sheer, unabashed passion.

In a world of tepid greys, Jayce was abrash, exuberant burst of brightness. And his ardor was a gift that kept giving. He'd brought color back into Mel's life. He'd given her a glimpse of the world as it could be, not as it was: a place of endless possibility.

If they only had the will to grasp it.

She'd taken a gamble on him. And at every step, he'd rewarded her. He'd made her smile. He'd made her think. He'd made her want to be more than she was: more daring, more defiant, more dauntless. And she'd made him stronger, in turn. She'd guided him through the slippery labyrinth of politics, tempered his bullheaded choices with cool pragmatism, and steered him, on occasion, from complete disaster.

With her, he'd believed anything was possible. With him, she'd felt the same. A perfect balance of ambition, beauty, and intellect.

The Golden Couple, the press had dubbed them.

But Jayce, for all his merits, was not a man to cut his own path. He'd never known the grinding ache of a hunger weaned by birthright. Never felt the keenness of the knife, twisting, with a mother's silence. Never known a world where privilege was not a promise kept, but a golden garotte around the throat.

For the Medardas, the ethos of power was not glory. It was survival. That was what the bloodline was bred for, and what it demanded: the need to claw its way to the apogee, and stay there.

But every apogee, a voice whispers, needs a nadir.

There is no peak without the abyss. And every climb is a fall, waiting to happen.

Jayce, born into a life of ease, never understood. And the brightness of his dream, pure and perfect, became Mel's blind spot. She'd seen the world, and their place in it: a vast, glorious expanse of the unimaginable. He'd stand by her, and she'd stand up for him, and together, they'd forge a new era.

Until, in the worst way, they had.

Their city ruptured. Their dream, in shreds. Their bond, an ash-pit.

Mel accepts the glass of pineapple juice a passing steward offers. Sipping, she thinks once more of Jayce: his easygoing smile, his boundless idealism. Then she lets the golden memories fall away in favor of what is right in front of her: the man she'd found at the bottom of that ash-pit.

And he, finding her, had shown her a different dream. A darker one: bleeding and yet never dying. Two cities, joined, against all odds.

Rising, by any means necessary.

Their eyes meet across the room. Silco, in conversation with a sparse clutch of older men, is watching her with a quiet intensity. Under his scrutiny, she feels like a gemstone held up to the light. Like she did this morning: caught, and pinned, and in a state of sublime surrender.

A curl at the corner of his mouth says: I see you.

Mel lifts her glass in a mock-toast.

Enjoy the show.

Smiling, she steps into the fray.

If Silco is the gravity well, Mel is the sun. The moment she materializes, the atmosphere transforms: a gloriole of life. The silence swirls into animated chatter. The guests, like celestial bodies, align into orbit. A chorus of well-wishes rises: Mel, darling, how are you feeling? — Councilor Medarda, how splendid to see you on your feet!—My dearest Melusine! At last, you've emerged!

Mel, her smile calibrated to dazzle, accepts their tributes with grace. In diplomacy, timing is everything. And she, every word fine-tuned for maximum impact, knows how to walk the line between approachability and allure. One moment she's regaling the group with a quip that dissolves them into gales of laughter. The next, she's demurring a bold overture with an artful pivot and a cool flutter of lashes.

It's an old song, and she's a seasoned player. Human emotions are a string quartet. She's learned, since girlhood, that her talent lies in knowing the right string to pluck. A smile to coax a dowager's taut cadences into a cello's mellow depth. A murmur to set off a young man's somber oboe into a high-spirited spill of arpeggios. A touch to elicit, from an aging general's lascivious violin, a full, rich chord of rapture.

And Mel: the maestra. Coaxing melody from dissonance, and bringing the whole ensemble into harmony.

Now, she plucks the closest string in reach: the Demacian dignitary's wife. The woman's a social stalwart: moneyed, magpie-eyed, and a moralist of the first degree. Paired with a penchant for petty gossip, she is the chief purveyor of the aristocracy's scandal-mill.

But her pedigree is a goldmine, and her support is a vital step toward Zaun's ascent into the global spotlight.

Mel, accordingly, makes her the target of a subtle campaign.

"Lady Dennings," she says, with a radiant smile. "How lovely to see you."

"Mel!" Lady Dennings, her peacock fan a blur of emerald and azure, flutters over. "By the Protector! What a fright you gave us! A week belowdeck—and nary a glimpse above!"

"I do apologize for the alarm."

"Alarm? My dear, we believed you were at death's door! And your husband, that dreadful man! He made a jape of it! Every evening, our queries about your health were met with a different tale." The fan flutters faster. "First, you were abed with ague. Then: bitten by a viper. And then—the final outrage—you were abducted by pirates!"

"Oh," Mel says, and can't quite stop the smile from curling,

"Oh? Mel, is that all you can say?"

"What else would you have me say?"

"Acknowledgment! The man's a rapscallion—and a devil!"

Mel's eyes go guilelessly round. "Devil?"

"Of the highest order!" The fan snaps shut, and the falsetto drops. "The word is, he forcibly confined you to your berth for six nights! All to conduct an infernal Fissure ritual. The bride, stripped and bound as a sacrifice to the dark gods. Then—" a shudder, "—a barbaric consummation. Is it true, my dear? Tell me it's not. Tell me you've not been brutalized in some pagan sacrament!"

Mel hides a smile behind the rim of her glass. Her mind conjures a vision of Silco, in a dark cloak, looming over her bound and naked body. The glow of his bad eye: a fire opal offset by a dozen low-burning candles.

The scenario is not, she admits, without its unholy thrill.

But the Dennings are a devoutly religious clan. Like the rest of Demacia, their stance on magic is unequivocally condemnatory. If they had their way, all practitioners of the arcane would be hung, drawn, and quartered. Even the mention of the subject is enough to provoke an apoplexy.

No doubt, during Mel's weeklong absence, Lady Dennings' imagination—and tongue—have been running rampant. Her mind, already primed to find fault with the union, will seize upon the most sordid scrap. In the process, she inadvertently reveals how little she understands of Zaun.

Or, indeed, what transpires in the privacy of the marital bedchamber.

The Dennings own marriage of a year, if Elora's reports are true, has gone unconsummated. Whether it's due to her husband's crippling bashfulness, or her own pie-eyed prudishness, is an open question. This voyage, at the behest of the Dennings patriarch, is a final bid for the pair to prove their mettle. A successful coupling—an heir—would seal a lucrative merger between their clans. Whereas a failure on both counts would see them disinherited.

Lord and Lady Dennings, on borrowed time, feel each bell-toll keenly. A pity they cannot share the same cabin together without squabbling incessantly.

Silco, possessing no surfeit of sympathy for prudish quirks and provincial qualms, has summed up the couple's predicament thus:

"Two virgins, and not a lick of sense between them."

It's a brutally sound assessment. But not, Mel thinks, without a measure of pity.

It must be excruciating to suffer the weight of a parent's expectations in such a private sphere. Not to mention the public mortification, should the failure come to light.

Fortunately, Mel's mind has sketched out a satisfactory solution.

Somberly, she says, "It's true."

"Dear heavens! You mean—?!"

"Bound to the bedframe, with a length of silk." Mel circles a finger along the rim of her glass. "But not for reasons you imagine."

Lady Dennings, eyes wide, is already imagining a great deal. "Gracious, Mel! What was he thinking?"

"Chiefly, of my safety."

"Safety—yes!" Lady Dennings clasps one of Mel's hands in both her own. "Zaunite men are a barbaric lot! Look at their women: all pinched cheeks and blackened eyes. They're beasts, by any other name. The notion that a darling such as yourself—" another shudder, "—locked in a cabin, and subjected to deflowering...!"

Mel's eyebrows wing skyward. In her ear, she can practically hear Silco's drawl:

What, precisely, am I deflowering? Your left nostril? The right's seen its share of traffic.

Taking another sip of juice, she stifles her snort. The Demacian peerage hold such archaic notions about chastity. Silco, if he ever caught wind, would take fiendish delight in dismantling them.

Fortunately, Silco is elsewhere. And Mel, more fortuitously, has the perfect string to pluck.

"My dear Lady Dennings," she chides gently. "You must put aside those scurrilous pamphlets."

"Scurrilous?"

"The ones from the gutter-press. Written, I wager, after a tankard of rotgut. I hear the stories, myself: the Fissurefolk, sacrificing virgins to demigods. Drinking the blood of newborn babes. Really, it's too much. One would think, given the scope of their enterprise, that their hours would be better employed." A sip of juice, sweet on the tongue. "They should write, instead, of Zaun's many wonders."

"Wonders?"

"Their herbal tinctures, for one." Her tone, perfectly balanced between soothing and secretive, reels the woman in. "You see, I'd been struck with a terrible fever. Sweats, delirium, and the most excruciating chills. If I hadn't been bed-bound, I might have taken a tumble down the stairs. Or flung myself into the sea."

"By the Light! And he—what, locked you up?"

"As a precaution. Nothing more. Mine was a rather stubborn malady. After five days' vigil, Silco took it upon himself to brew a concoction. A tea, of sorts. Boiled from powdered red clover. Quite astringent, but most effective." Mel sighs. "I haven't felt so well-rested in years."

It did not occur in exactly that fashion. Mel was too woozy to summon the particulars. All she recalls is Silco's shadow looming in. A cup's rim, steaming, pressed to her lips. A bracing tang, and the slow, steady, searing drip down her throat.

She'd succumbed to sleep right after. But she'd awoken much refreshed, and lucid.

When she'd queried him, Silco had shrugged: It's a tonic for the blood. Fire it up, and sweat the fever out.

With the smallest of smirks: Good for firing up the loins, too.

Lady Dennings is listening raptly. "He tended to you, personally?"

"Like a physician. Only sweeter." A wistful sigh. "It's a rare man who'll kneel at his lady's bedside." She doesn't, in fact, recall much kneeling. But every good story needs a spin. Diplomacy's bedrock is built on well-told fiction. "Truly, the tales of Zaunite men as brutes are wildly untrue. In their own way, they're quite..." A delicate pause, "... devoted."

"Oh, indeed?"

"I dare not divulge too much. Modesty compels me. But..." Mel's register drops. "... I will say this: Zaunites may lack the polish of a Piltovan gentleman. But they more than make up for it with the... ardor... of their pursuit."

Lady Dennings' mouth forms a perfect 'O.' "Gracious!"

"Gracious? No. Gratifying? Certainly." Mel's lips curve. "And gratifyingly often."

Lady Dennings turns a telling shade of carnation. "Dear me. That's—how intriguing!"

"Isn't it?" Another sip, and a deeper smile. "The Fissures, I find, have much to teach us. I've only just begun my lessons. But I've made such fascinating discoveries. Did you know, for instance, that powdered red clover, steeped in tea, has an aphrodisiacal effect?"

"An aphro—really?"

"Really. It's quite potent. In fact, it can be used as an antidote for..." Then, as if remembering herself. "But forgive me. This is no place to discuss such a delicate subject. I must beg your discretion."

Lady Dennings, fan fluttering, has gone from carnation to crimson. There is, as Mel suspected, a great deal of pent-up frustration simmering below that prissy surface.

Mel makes her move: a single strum, and a long, sustained note of intimacy.

"If you're amenable," she murmurs, "I'll share more details with you. Perhaps over a quiet tea? Just us girls."

"I—yes! Of course! Red clover, you say?"

"A singular plant. It grows at the edges of the Fissure cliffs. Many a scholar has written of the benefits." A conspiratorial dip of lashes. "You and your lord husband may find the taste a revelation."

"My, erm, husband," Lady Dennings stammers, "is quite—" fan dangling limply, "—fastidious."

"Then, my dear, it is high time he was reacquainted with his reckless youth."

"Oh, Mel, do you truly think...?"

"I shall do better." Mel imparts a light squeeze to the woman's arm. "I will send a gift with you: a small satchel, for your bedchamber. Try a spoonful, with two glasses of cold water. One for yourself. And the other, to share." A significant silence, then a final pluck. "The results, I promise, will be expeditious."

Lady Dennings' eyes take on a hopeful gleam. "How expeditious?"

"Let's just say: by the summer's end, you'll be celebrating more than your wedding anniversary."

It works like a charm. Lady Dennings, clutching Mel's hands, exclaims, "My dear girl, you're a dove! I shall owe you a thousand favors!"

"None required." Mel's smile is sunshine through clouds. "Consider it a gift, from a dear friend."

"You darling thing! We shall have a girl's talk tonight. And afterward—" a flushing glance toward her husband, stoop-shouldered and sour-faced in the corner, "—why, we'll see what comes."

With luck, him, and you too, Mel thinks.

"Tonight, then," she says. "I'll have a basket sent up to your cabin. But remember—ssh. It is a private affair." Her fingertip, pressed playfully to her lips, earns a titillated twinkle. "Now, if you'll pardon me. I must catch up with the others."

"Oh, of course! I shan't hold you up." Lady Dennings' fan resumes its flutter. Her thoughts, plainly, are palpitating elsewhere. "And do send up the basket! I cannot wait!"

Mel, her work done, glides off.

One down, she thinks, sipping her drink. A half-dozen to go.

Red clover's effects are not, in fact, a fiction. Mel, during her research into Zaun's history, has read volumes on the subject. And experienced, firsthand, its efficacy.

She'd shared a spoonful with Jayce, back when they were together. Purely for research reasons, of course. She'd only given him a mouthful, and he'd been wild to have her—so much, she'd ended up with her dress in shreds, one slipper dangling from the ceiling fan, and the other flung straight through the window.

Afterward, Jayce had apologized shamefacedly. Mel, secretly charmed, had assured him the fault was hers.

They'd never touched the stuff again. But Mel has not forgotten.

By tonight, she suspects, neither will Lady and Lord Dennings. With luck, a little Dennings-to-be will soon be in the picture, courtesy of Mel's powdered charity. Mel, in turn, will have gained a pocketful of Dennings coin, and the political currency to bargain with Demacian traders for red clover as a mass-market commodity.

Soon, word will spread. The Fissures are in possession of miracles, in potentia.

Zaun's economy could use a healthy boost. And Piltover, by proxy, will feel the benefit.

Marriage: by any other name.

Satisfied, Mel's focus shifts to the next string.

The string, as luck would have it, sails her way. Cevila, wife of the Piltovan exchequer: a statuesque ice-eyed blond who'd made Mel's life an unending misery back in her salad days as an emigree. A native Piltovan with close ties to House Ferros, she prides herself on her pedigree, her purse-strings, and her impeccable taste—or, in Mel's private reckoning, her impeccable lack thereof.

Since Mel's ascent into the corridors of power, Cevila's kept up an endless siege under a guise of cordiality. Barbs couched in a show of sisterhood; favors Mel cannot deny without close allies feeling snubbed; invitations she cannot refuse without offending the very people she seeks to woo.

It's a tedious dance. But Cevila's rank confers her with gravitas among the glitterati. Her opinion, when solicited, is considered gospel.

Mel, the Madonna of Piltover, cannot afford to play the sinner.

"Cevila," she greets airily. "How are you faring?"

"Oh, my dove! Better, now that I see you're in fine fettle. But how peaked you look! It must be that frock. Quite lovely, but rather..." A critical once-over, "... plain."

Mel's smile, soft as a cat's paw, hides claws. "The style is from East Shurima. A gift from the Sadja clan."

"Is it? That explains it. They're a droll set. All silks and scarabs. They'd wrap themselves in the city's flag, if they thought it'd give them airs." A barely-there squeeze of Mel's elbow. "No offense, my darling. I know you're a patroness of theirs."

Mel, noting the dig, pivots. "Whereas you, in your plumage, are a bird of paradise."

In fact, she resembles a harpy. The Ferros features, chipped from granite, accord the face a certain regal grandeur. But Cevila, with her penchant for feathered ostentation, has a way of transforming even the most sober attire into avian excess.

Today, she's swathed in a plum silk sheath studded with gold-chased amethysts. A matching choker, its collar encrusted with citrines, enfolds her neck. Her hair, lacquered within an inch of its life, is a helmet of pale yellow, and adorned with a nest's worth of diamond-and-pearl pinfeathers.

Mel, taking in the effect, feels an odd pang. The last time she'd worn such an extravagance of gems, it had been on the heels of her split with Jayce. Her mind had been in disarray. Her sartorial choices, likewise. Each dress, shimmering, had been a salve: a reminder that no matter how her heart ached, the rest of her could still shine.

Now, taking in Cevila's glitter, her mind pieces together a new puzzle.

"Your husband must be so proud," Mel says, "to have you on his arm."

"He is, yes." Cevila's grip, on her elbow, tightens a fraction. It's a tell, and Mel tucks it away. "Of course, his pride is not all that's on his arm."

I would doubt that, Mel thinks.

She already has the measure of Cevila's husband: a man twice her age, and whose sole claim to fame, apart from a family name two centuries old, is mediocrity incarnate. He'd married the ferocious Cevila purely for the prestige of the Ferros title She'd been, to pardon the pun, a feather in his cap.

Privately, it's no secret that his tastes run younger and far less discerning. Of late, he's been spotted frequenting the entertainment district of Zaun's Boundary Markets. More specifically, an establishment hosting two Shuriman-born dancers—brothers by blood, and by the rumor mill, bedmates.

Cevila is far from blind to her husband's proclivities. Mel, who's witnessed their tête-à-têtes at society gatherings, has noticed the strain behind their smiles. Two strangers, trapped in the same gilded cage. According to Elora's reports, she's making preparations to serve him with divorce papers. Once the split is finalized, she'll set her sights on a new target: younger, better-connected, and more importantly, better-funded.

The roster is long, and the contenders many. Even Jayce, the poor dear, is rumored to be on her radar.

Cevila's eye, however, is not on matrimonial bliss. Her goal is to secure enough funds to purchase a mining seam in the Fissures' southwest quadrant. Its yield is substantial: pure platinum and gold. To claim it, she's leveraged everything from her family's connections to a cadre of solicitors—to no avail.

Silco, rebuffing every overture, has made plain that the land is not for sale.

The refusal, in Cevila's view, is a personal slight. And Mel, as her chief adversary, has become a natural target.

"It is truly good to see you well," Cevila says, with a talonlike grip on Mel's elbow. "I was concerned, of course. But it was your husband who most needed a watchful eye. Why, a lesser man would've taken succor at the nearest port-of-call."

Mel, inwardly translating Harpy to Buzzard, smiles. "A lesser man, yes. Mine stayed firmly anchored."

"And decidedly taciturn! He wouldn't even deign to give an update." The twin flintlocks of her eyes turn Silco's way. "You'd think he was in mourning. His beloved, or his bachelorhood—it's difficult to say which."

Mel has yet to see Silco grieve anything beyond an errant hangnail. Cevila's remarks, as ever, serve no purpose beyond baiting her.

Taking the proffered string, Mel plays it for all its worth. "My husband is a man of few words." At least, when his tongue's occupied elsewhere. "As it is, he's accustomed to livelier pastimes. Compared to Zaun's vibrancy, a week at sea is a veritable lull." A sip, and a sigh. "Confined company does make a dull time of it."

The subtext is subtle, but unmistakable. Cevila, in her plumage, bristles.

"Confined—or refined? His manners are decent enough. But pedigree's the real test." Her chin cuts a scornful arc. "The Fissures, after all, are a pestilence pit." Then, catching herself. "I mean no disrespect, my dove. Marriage factors more than sentiment for our stripe, as we both know. One plays the hand one’s dealt. But we're women of the world, are we not? We both understand the value of preserving a legacy." Her eyes pass, speculatively, over Mel's belly. "And the consequences, should our choice fail to meet it."

The stab is plain: Silco, Fissure-born, is exemplary of his breed. Filth, mud, scum. Any child, a byproduct of that union, will bear the taint. A taint that will spread to Piltover's streets. To the halls of the High Council. To the very heart of the City of Progress.

Mel's fingers flex on the stem of her glass. A thousand old slights, she'll bear with aplomb. But this, the freshest insult, makes her see red.

For a moment, she understands Ambessa's warpath. The primal urge, to defend at any cost. Mel has spent a lifetime keeping a lid on her own fire. But her mother's blood runs true. The anger is a hissing spark, ready to ignite. If she were a Medarda of the old guard, she would carve her name straight through Cevila's heart.

Up ahead, Silco is still slouched by the bar. Lighting a cigarette, he taps out the spent match. Behind the leisurely ribbons of smoke, his scarred profile is all insouciant angles. But Mel feels his focus like a hot brand. He has been listening, too. Not with his ears, but his eyes.

And Cevila could find herself on the wrong side of a scope.

That decides Mel.

A Medarda's wrath is legendary. But a Zaunite's is fatal. Between their cities, there have been enough bloodbaths.

Diplomacy, and not daggers, must prevail.

So she smiles, and tugs on a subtler string.

"Legacy, yes." A slow sip of juice. "My husband and I have discussed it. In particular, provisions for the future."

"Provisions?" Cevila's keen eyes dart between Mel and the bar. "Whatever do you mean?"

"Only that the winds of change are never gentle. And when they blow, fortunes can shift." She swirls her drink. "I always caution my fellow Councilors against complacency. Or ill-advised investments in foreign ventures. A single declaration of war, and the trade-lines go dry. A few misplaced funds, and the whole enterprise goes belly-up. We must keep our assets, well, closer to home."

"Home?" Cevila repeats, astute as ever. "Or Zaun?"

"Zaun is our sister city. As it stands, her prospects are excellent. But Silco believes, and I concur, in strengthening our individual portfolios. Piltover, for instance, has ample potential for growth in the manufacturing sector. With Hextech, we have the means to revolutionize the market." Musingly, "In turn, Zaun has her mines, and the wisdom, age old, to refine their yield."

At the mention of the mines, a covetous gleam kindles in Cevila's eye. "The mines. Yes."

"Recently, the Fissure seams, thanks to diligent labor, have hit the motherlode. Soon, the output will be tripled. Even quadrupled." The morsel dangles: a succulent cut of red meat. Then: "Naturally, Silco is determined to keep the wealth concentrated in the hands of those who labored for it."

Cevila is brought up short. "In a matter of wages?"

"Oh, nothing so crass. The miners' guild is a collective. Their assets are held in trust, for the benefit of the whole. Older seams, owned by barons, are likewise protected. But Silco believes in safeguarding his city's long-term interest. To that end, the Zaun’s recently enacted a decree for the lifelong preservation of the mines."

Suddenly, Cevila's feathers are a-quiver. "I—I'm not quite sure I follow."

"Then allow me to clarify. For the last century, the Fissures have been a free-for-all. Foreign hands, ours and otherwise, have scooped up whatever they could. They've left the remainder in chaos. A dozen factions, battling each other for scraps. It's been a waste of resources. And, frankly, a waste of life." Her fingertips clink across the stem of her glass: a percussive counterpoint to the silence. "The Cabinet's new policy aims to restore a sense of order. No longer will foreign backers have unfettered access to the veins. Only Fissureborns—guilds or barons—will hold title to their respective stakes. All the proceeds will remain local, and invested in the betterment of the people. The clause will be embedded into the deeds. In perpetuity."

"Perpetuity?"

"Forever and a day." Mel goes solemn. "As my mother likes to say: Blood will always out. Only the children of born Zaunites will inherit the mines. And those children, should the time come, shall have the final say in who holds ownership."

"But Mel! Surely the Council cannot condone—"

"Dear Cevila. The Council's writ does not extend to Zaun. The Fissures, by Treaty, are a sovereign state." A grateful sigh. "I suppose it's a rare stroke of luck. By wedding a man of Fissure birth, I will enjoy greater access than most. And our children, by default, shall have the deepest roots." She meets Cevila's eyes over the rim of her glass. "A legacy, as you say."

Cevila seems to have forgotten how to breathe. A small mercy: her talon has retracted from Mel's elbow.

"This is—well." With effort, she finds her composure. "This is unexpected news."

"Isn't it?" Mel, smiling, sets down her drink. She's dangled the lure, then snatched it away. Cevila, chewing on her loss, is now primed for any scrap. "Naturally, in wake of this decree, the demand for Fissure stones has begun skyrocketing. Do you happen to own any, Cevila? Perhaps a pendant or a bauble?"

Cevila rallies a smile. It's a ghastly effort. "I, ah, have a ring or two."

"Lovely. Their worth is about to treble. Do you remember my necklace? The blue diamond-drop?"

"Vividly."

"It was a gift. Designed by the artisans in the Boundary Markets. Their craftsmanship is second to none." A calculated pause. "If you're amenable, I'll speak to the artisan's guild. We can summon one of their agents to my apartments. Then, perhaps, commission a set?"

The gleam in Cevila's eyes brightens. "You—you'd do that? My dove, I couldn't possibly accept—"

"Nonsense. You are, after all, one of my closest friends. And the artisan's guild are a lovely group. They are headed by a close ally of Silco's. A Zaunite, and a first-rate entrepreneur. His family are descended from the ancient Oshra Va'Zaun line. Did you know, they once held dominion over the isthmus?"

"I do, yes." Cevila's beak wrinkles. "Until our Wardens cut off their privy purses—" re: confiscated their estates and sold the spoils at auction to foreign investors, "—and the rest were sent packing. Most sold off piles of heirlooms to stay afloat. And what's left are probably riddled with the plague."

"What's left are the mines," Mel corrects. "And Silco's friend, as fortune would have it, inherited much of the old Oshra Va'Zaun stock. He is, as they call them belowground, a gold baron."

Now Cevila's eyes are aglow. "A gold baron, you say?"

"A charming gentleman. Sadly, still unattached. But his means are considerable. And his tastes, exquisite. He is a patron of the arts. A discerning collector. I daresay he'd be an ideal candidate for a lady of your caliber."

For business—or matrimony—Mel doesn't deign to specify. She doesn't need to.

The hook is lodged deep. Cevila, her smile pure gluttony, is already planning her next coup. A Zaunite husband on her string, and gold at her fingertips.

All it would cost her: pride, prejudice, and a single night's sleep.

"You know," she says, "I do pride myself on an eye for quality."

Mel purrs. "I have every faith that you will come away, well satisfied."

"I believe next month I have an open window. If your schedule can accommodate—"

"I'm sure we can work something out."

"Good. Good. I'll be in touch." Cevila flicks a glance at Silco. The distaste is tinged with a new layer of intrigue. "And, of course, your husband will be present to broker the introduction?"

Mel lies, smooth as silk, "He'd be delighted."

In fact, she suspects, Silco would rather have his liver cut out. Between Zaun's bigheaded bourgeois and Piltover's self-aggrandizing aristocracy, his tolerance will be sorely tried. But, whatever else, her husband is a pragmatist. A potential trade with House Ferros is too lucrative to dismiss. Better still if it ends with a merger—literal—between Cevila and one of his barons. A symbol of unity—or, at the very least, shared gain.

Marriage: by any name.

Cevila, her high spirits restored, swans off. Pleased, Mel accepts another flute of pineapple juice from a passing steward. She is beginning to feel back in her stride. The crowd, once an unwieldy beast, is now a pliant and responsive chorus.

Serenely, she moves on to the next string. The Piltovan ambassador—an old fusspot fittingly named Hector.

As a high-ranking member of government, the voyage must suffer his presence. But Mel has heard Silco, in the privacy of their suite, wish him more than once to the bottom of the sea. One word on Zaun, and he's off: a diatribe on the perils of a lowborn populace without oversight, the undercity as the mouth of Hell, and Fissurefolk as the demons therein.

Mel, having the measure of his string, has learnt to play it deftly. Usually, she douses his rants with a few drops of sweetened condescension. Other times, she plays the ingenue, and laments his lot in life: a stalwart of the old order, trapped between the twin forces of progress and decay. If neither of those tactics serve, a flash of cleavage is enough to set him off-kilter.

Admittedly, the method is not the noblest. But she will not apologize for keeping a peaceable accord.

"Lord Hector," she greets serenely. "How wonderful to see you."

"Mel!" The ambassador, ruddy-faced and portly, hauls himself to his feet. A plateful of trifle is hastily abandoned. "My Melusine, what a vision you are!"

"You flatterer." A kiss, pecked airily on his cheek. "I trust you're faring well?"

"Oh, the usual. Tallying the votes. Calculating the ledgers. Nothing a bit of good food can't fix." He casts a mournful eye at the trifle. "A pity the chef won't let me near the kitchens. If I could only get my hands on the caramel sauce for the mousse—"

"Now, now, Lord Hector." Mel's index finger ticks playfully. "We'd end up with a shortage."

"I'd not hoard the stuff, my girl! I'd only sample." The woebegone look is as patently false as his bawdy wink. "Sample liberally."

"Really, Lord Hector. You are shameless." Coyly, Mel tucks a dangling curl behind her ear. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were angling for a different dessert."

"Only if you're game, my dear. Though rumor has it—” Another wink, “you've already had a nibble."

"Why, Lord Hector. Whatever are you insinuating?"

"You and that husband of yours. I'm told you were cooped up, the pair of you. Six nights, and a locked door." He chortles. "If there was no nibbling, I'll eat my hat. Is it true you'd come down with ague, or was the whole business a bedtime story?"

Mel puts on an abashed smile. "Oh, I was bedbound. But it was quite a dull affair. Fever, delirium, the works."

"Frightful! But your man looked after you, did he?" The wink becomes a leer. "Or was it he that left you bedridden? They say Zaunites are half-rabid, the lot of them. And yours, my dear, has a pack of knives for teeth. If I were you, I'd have been frightened out of my wits."

It's a vulgar turn, but Mel knows when to play her hand. "You're incorrigible, Lord Hector. My husband is the picture of civility." Her voice drops meaningfully. "And watching us as we speak."

A hasty glance over Lord Hector's shoulder confirms the fact. Silco, slouched with the remnants of his cigarette, is observing their exchange. His features project boredom. But his focus is keenly honed. Mel has the distinct sense that if Hector so much as breathed a lecherous sigh her way, he'd find himself staring down the barrel of a pistol.

Hector, wisely, does not test the theory.

"Well, well," he says, and clears his throat. But his manner, with Mel, becomes a good deal more circumspect. "He's a watchful sort, isn't he? But that's no surprise. The Fissures are a foul pit. It takes a hard head, or a harder fist, to survive. Why, I had a letter from my cousin last month. She was telling me how her youngest, a delicate little thing, crossed the Bridge and fell ill!"

"Of Grey Lung?"

"Heavens, no! Just the sniffles. But, mark my words, the next epidemic will be upon us soon! I still recall, in the summer of sixty-three, when the harbor was beset with the Ash Plague. Hundreds of souls, lost in a matter of days. If not for the Council's swift action, and the timely quarantine, we might've all perished!"

Mel hides her frown.

She's done her research. The Ash Plague had, in fact, claimed thousands rather than hundreds. A majority of its victims were from the Undercity. And the Council, for all its posturing, had done little to address the root cause: the filth-encrusted streets, the sewage-bloated canals, the slums packed like sardines in a tin.

The quarantine, too, was little better than a farce. Fissurefolk, sickly and suffering, were barricaded belowground. Anyone who dared defy the order faced immediate arrest. The result was a public health catastrophe. Topside, the epidemic's spread was halted swift;y. Belowground, it raged like wildfire, and took the young, the weak, the elderly.

Mel remembers Silco, once, describing the aftermath: Bodies piled up like driftwood. Flies swarming so thick, they formed clouds.

The smell of death in every breath.

The story is a stark contrast to the Council's sanitized narrative: the triumph of science over superstition, under Piltover's noble hand.

But in Zaun, the truth will not be silenced. The scars, never erased.

Mel, her juice gone tasteless, thinks: If I'd not met Silco, I'd still be in the dark.

"Dear Hector," she says, mildly. "The Ash Plague was decades ago. Why revive old fears?"

"Revive? Fie! The fears, my girl, like the Fissures' insalubrious air, are ever present! My own wife, last time she braved those wretched streets, came a hair's breadth from death!"

"Death?"

"She nearly fell down a manhole! And you know what happened next?" Hector shudders. "Her high-heel got caught, and she tumbled into the muck. She had to toss the whole lot! Why, it was a nightmare. It took three stout-hearted men and a crowbar to pry her free."

Mel's eyes meet Silco's across the room. Silco’s lips barely twitch.

He’d been present during that absurdist tableau. In fact, he'd paid the very men who'd pulled Hector's wife free. The woman, a shrill-voiced dumpling with a penchant for frills, had been too busy shrieking to thank her saviors. Afterward, though, she'd found herself recounting the narrow save with a breathless lilt. Perhaps, Mel suspects, it was all that close handling by the stout-hearted men.

Since the Crowbar Incident, as it has come to be known, Lady Hector has developed a powerful fascination with the Fissures. Indeed, Mel suspects the only reason she's prodded her husband to invite himself to this cruise is to gather juicy tidbits about Zaun.

Her ardent curiosity, paired with Hector's fecklessness, are twin chords of opportunity. Ones that, plucked just so, will make for a profitable duet.

So Mel takes a slow sip, and lets a sympathetic smile play.

"How dreadful. But, I daresay, you and your wife will fare better now."

"Oh?"

"Zaun has developed a reputable network of guides and concierges. They know all the best districts."

"All the best?"

"I've visited them personally." She names several: a jeweler's, a chocolatier's, a clothier's. "All within a short walk along the Promenade. Your little grandson, Remi, will adore the chocolatier's wares. Truffles in the shapes of beetles. Marzipan worms. And a lovely caramelized-pear confection." Her eyes pass from the plateful of trifle to Hector's portly belly. "You, too, would enjoy a liberal sampling."

Stirred, Hector leans in. "Well, I'll be. And these shops are safe?"

"Perfectly. Travelers from Piltover and abroad flock to them. The shopkeepers, I promise, are courtesy itself."

"And, I take it, the security is sound?"

"Every shop is guarded by a retinue of trained blackguards. The streets, paved and clean, are kept free of footpads. House Medarda often hosts private soirées at the Promenade. I've never once been accosted by a ruffian—much less a rat." A pat, fond and wholly fabricated, to Hector's shoulder. "You needn't fear, dear Hector. Zaun, these days, is the very model of civilized conduct."

Hector warms visibly. "Ah, well, if it's good enough for you, what's this old curmudgeon to worry about? I'll speak to my wife. She's awfully keen to, ah, venture farther afield. She's always been a curious sort." A wink. "A bit like you, eh?" His hand, clumsily, covers hers. "Tell me. If I were to visit, could you arrange a private tour?"

Mel, who'd predicted the turn, delicately extracts her hand. "Shame on you, Lord Hector. I'm a married woman." The implication being: were she unattached, her answer would've been very different. "But if it's a personal guide you seek, I have just the one." Mel names a service: the same one Silco's crew employs. "They'll arrange tours at your convenience."

"Splendid, splendid! You, ah, must tell me more about the clothiers. A few new shirts are just the thing." Another glance at Silco, now sizing him up with a more speculative eye. "Your Trencher dresses sharp, I'll give him that. Perhaps he'll spare me a tip or two. He is a Fissureborn, after all. He must know all the best garment districts."

"Oh, he does."

In fact, the identity of Silco's tailor is a closely guarded secret. The man, a wizened Shuriman refugee, has his workshop hidden away in the depths of the Commercia Fantastica. He sews, by hand, each article of clothing to the customer's measure. Silco has two-dozen suits from him, in varying shades and cuts. Black with merlot accents, charcoal grey with blue-green brocade, two-toned midnight blue with silver embroidery.

The styles are all distinctly Zaunite. Tailored to Silco's lean frame, they evoke a serpent's sinuous grace. They are also remarkably versatile. Mel has watched them transform him, chameleonlike, from a sleek statesman to a shadowy specter, and back again.

But more than statements of sartorial flair, they serve a brute utility. The fabrics are Fissure textile: light, flexible, and impervious to damp. In a pinch, they serve as body armor: a sleeve with a cleverly-crafted sheath for a concealed blade; a snug little pouch, discreetly cut into the waistcoat, for a smoke-pellet; a garotte, lined along the edge of a cravat, to slit a stranger's throat.

Mel recalls, at a Topside gala before their engagement, the sight of Silco, turned out in formalwear: a simple black suit with a white silk pocket square. The cut was, for all its sleek simplicity, more durable than appearance suggested. She'd learned firsthand when Silco, strolling arm-in-arm with her through the night-gardens, had been waylaid by an Enforcer who'd demanded to see his identification.

Whether out of a superabundance of caution, or a bigot's crude compulsion, Mel still isn't sure.

She'd moved to intercede. But Silco had checked her with the barest skim of fingertips at her wrist. Addressing the Enforcer with politeness, but not a jot of respect, he'd asked if he looked like a trespasser. The Enforcer shot back that he looked like a cutthroat.

Silco, never one to pass up a chance for roleplaying, had obliged by nearly slitting the man's throat.

The officer, a greenhorn, had plainly not been expecting a real knife to materialize at his jugular. In his shock, he’d dropped his truncheon and hightailed it. Mel, amused and appalled in equal measure, had turned to Silco, a chastisement on her lips.

Only to find herself scooped up into his arms, then carried up a trellis and out of sight.

They'd spent the rest of the evening, astride the rooftop's shingles, discussing trade. The only time Silco's hands had strayed from her waist was to light a cigarette. Or to cup her cheek. Or to tilt her face up to his. Meanwhile, seven stories below, a contingent of officers had frantically been sounding the alarm to outcries of highwaymen and abduction.

When the hounds had arrived on the scene, Silco had scoffed so hard, he'd nearly fallen down the eaves. Mel, not wishing him to break his neck, had clung tightly. Somewhere between the third kiss and the fourth, she'd decided to tug him closer. He'd ended up treating her to what Zaunites called 'The Penthouse Plus'—making love right on the gritty shingles, her dress hiked up around her waist and his coat spread out beneath them.

The giddy thrill had opened her lungs. Only his mouth on hers, drinking her cries, had kept her silent.

Afterward, smooth as a conjurer's trick, Silco had slipped them both downstairs and back into the garden. The search, by then, was over. The Enforcers, their bluster gone, had been reduced to scouring the hedges. Silco, his eyes dark with devious glee, had strolled casually past them, and into the ballroom, to fetch himself and Mel a plateful of dessert.

It had proved the scandal of the summer. Councilor Medarda, swept off at knifepoint in the middle of a gala. Then, miraculously, reappearing hours later: no worse for wear, and a good deal more cheerful, arm-in-arm with her assailant.

Whose suit, it should be noted, was perfectly intact. No rips, wrinkles, or even a rumpled lapel.

Afterward, Mel had summoned the rookie officer, and his Captain, into her office. A blistering dressing-down on misconduct was meted out. The officer had insulted her guest, and by extension, the goodwill between Zaun and Piltover. When she'd reintroduced Silco as her fiancé, the rookie's mortification was palpable.

Silco had taken the opportunity to renew his acquaintance: not with knife against the jugular, but with a smile twice as sharp, and a firm handshake that promised, without words, a fate worse than death if the man dared call him a crook again.

But afterward, alone in her chambers, Mel had found herself thinking: This is what his life has been.

Fighting to keep the ground under his feet.

And even now, at the zenith of his power, there was no place for him Topside. No welcome in these hallowed halls. This, he'd told her, was why Zaun existed. To ensure no other Fissure child had to suffer what he had. And for him, the fight was not over. The world, not won.

Not until the last sliver of his city, and its people, were secure.

Smoothing the memory away, Mel summons a smile. "I'll do you one better, Lord Hector. Why don't we arrange an outing? You, your wife, Silco and myself. We'll tour the most exquisite spots at the Promenade. You will see that the Fissures are no hellmouth. And my husband will have the honor of escorting us, to ensure the journey is a comfortable one."

Hector's kneejerk distaste yields to temptation. Beneath his condemnation of Zaun lurks an avid desire: to sample the city's exotic otherness. Mel has seen it before, in the eyes of her fellow Councillors: a yearning for the novel, inverted into show-offish censure.

As though by damning Zaun's vices, they can exalt their own.

"We-ell," Hector relents, "if he can spare the time, I believe we could squeeze in a quick outing. It'd be, ah, good to get a lay of the land." His hand, again, gropes clumsily for hers. "A bit of a reconnaissance mission, eh? Always good to keep an ear to the ground." A third, utterly shameless, wink. "And one's eyes on the goods."

Mel, inwardly rolling her own, keeps her smile fixed. "Yours, Lord Hector, are a pair no lady could deny." Then: "You ought to return yours to the trifle. I do believe it's melting."

Lord Hector's wink falls askew. "Oh, drat! I'd best fetch another plate!"

Excusing himself, he bustles off. Mel, taking stock of her success, finishes off her drink.

A few discordant strings, but the symphony is well underway. Soon, Piltover's entire social circuit will change its tune. That is, in sum, the spirit of this voyage. Gathering allies. Making connections. Creating new opportunities, and exploiting old ones. Hecter's not the only guest with a taste for the unusual. Nor Cevila and the Dennings the only ones whose purse-strings, tugged the right way, will yield a hefty haul.

In time, Mel will cultivate them all.

And they, in turn, will cultivate Zaun's and Piltover's interests.

Marriage: by any other name.

Then she hears, to the thunder of boots, a bark: "Medarda!"

Mel stifles a sigh.

It is the Noxian envoy—a damnable brute by the name of Garlen. The man is a wolf of the worst kind: festooned in blood-red, and slavering for a kill. A high-ranking brigadier of Noxus's military, he's spent his career subjugating swathes of the Ionian continent. Now, as part of a political alliance between Noxus and Piltover, he's been dispatched as a 'liaison'.

His actual duties, as far as Mel can discern, are to make a nuisance of himself. Negotiating with him is like wrestling a hound: an exercise in futility. Her gift for subtlety is met with brash disparagement. Her cleverness, dismissed as flirtatious banter. And if she has the misfortune of sharing his company alone, he's liable to start groping. More than once, she's resorted to employing armed sentries, to dissuade his wandering hands.

In truth, the only thing keeping him from her throat is Ambessa.

The brigadier, knowing the threat of the General's retribution, is careful not to overstep. But his ambition is as deep-rooted as his lechery. He's keen to establish a foothold in Piltover. Mel, as a Councilor, makes an appealing target. Not only does she have access to the High Council's ear, but also to the coffers of the Medarda clan.

Once, to Mel's eternal dismay, he’d gotten drunk at a press junket, and dared to propose marriage to her before the cameras. A fortnight before her wedding, no less. Her fiancé—after a tiresome tirade on his low birth, his physique, his unsuitability—he'd threatened to disembowel on the spot.

Silco, who relished the pretext to make an ass out of anyone, had proposed a simpler solution: a duel to first blood.

It had been, in Sevika's blunt retelling, Like a fucking slaughterhouse.

Garlen was an able swordsman. But he’d underestimated Zaun's spirit of ruthless ingenuity. He'd walked in believing the fight was in his favor. Silco, in ten minutes, had turned the belief on its head. Then, he'd reduced the duel to a carnival sideshow. First, he'd blinded his opponent with a faceful of sludge from the streets. Then, with a well-placed boot, he'd sent the Noxian envoy skidding into a gutter. Finally, as a coup de grace, he'd whipped out a switchblade and stabbed him. The blow, to the meat of Garlen's thigh, had nearly severed an artery.

Garlen, howling bloody murder, had been hauled away by his guards. He'd spent the rest of the week in Zaun's infirmary. The next morning, he'd boarded the ferry back to Piltover: tail tucked between his legs.

And his pride, as the Undercity saying goes, In a shit-stained shoe.

Since the incident, Garlen's been cautious about antagonizing Silco in public. But his contempt for the city is undiminished. His attitude toward Mel, accordingly, is one of open scorn. To him, she is the weakest link in the Medarda chain.

A pretty little chit, who, when the going gets tough, will cave to the strongest bidder.

The irony is not lost on Mel. Were she truly a spineless chit, she'd have sold herself a long time ago. And, likely, to a man like Garlen. A dynastic marriage was a common means of doubling her clan's prosperity. But the prospect of a lifetime wrangling the brutish lout—enduring his crude lusts and his insufferable temper—was abhorrent. She'd never have consented to it, unless by force.

Silco, whatever else, has always respected her separateness. And his ambition to walk with her—not behind her or in front—is equal to her own. Their combined will is a potent force. One that will, in time, forge a brighter future.

For Mel, that is worth every sacrifice.

In her ear, Jayce's voice intrudes: a forlorn query in lieu of farewell.

"Even love?"

"Medarda," Garlen barks, louder. "I've got a bone to pick with you."

Mel's smile becomes an airtight lock. "Bones, Sir Galen? Aren't we feeding you enough?"

"What's the reason we've anchored off-course?" He sweeps a thick arm at the motionless horizon. "I was told we'd reach the Ionian coast before noon. The sun's almost overhead. If I don't make landfall by sundown, my troops will be wondering if I've gone missing."

"Surely you can wait another hour?"

"An hour? The blazes are we wasting an hour for? If we're going to float in the middle of nowhere, at least make it worth my time!" Leering, he slaps his thigh. "How about a floor-show? You look fit for one, all tarted up in that handkerchief. Why don't you sing me a song or two?"

Mel's features remain smooth. "You have, I'm afraid, mistaken me for a canary. But if you're keen for music, our orchestra would happily oblige."

"Feh. A bunch of prissy string-pullers? What use are they? Give me a proper band: men with brass pipes, and war-drums, and a real beat! Then I'll show you a performance." Garlen's eyes take their time crawling down Mel's body. "You'll see how a proper Noxian can make the ground shake."

Her countrymen, Mel thinks, are such a tiresome lot. Especially the military set. "On a ship, Sir Garlen, we call that seasickness."

"And this damn delay? What'd you call that?"

"A detour."

"Detour?" Garlen's bristly brows merge like thunderheads. "On whose blasted order?"

"Mine."

Silco materializes as if risen up from the depths.

The sunlight, white and warm, dapples the air. Yet the plunge in temperature is palpable. It is, Mel thinks, not unlike two polarities—the dark and the light—aligning at once. A disorienting sensation, the first time it’d occurred: Silco stepping into her path, and the world tilting off its axis.

The guests, huddling closer, murmur warily. Cevila's face, heavily rouged, is a shade paler. Lady Dennings' fan is a blur. Hector's gulp is audible. The rest of the party are paralyzed in place. All except Garlen, who has the temerity to laugh.

It's more bark than bite. He's already felt Silco's blade once. He won't tempt his teeth.

"Well, well," he sneers. "The blushing bridegroom."

"Sir Garlen," Silco returns, with a small nod. "Good of you to join us."

"I wasn't given a choice! We're supposed to be on land, not floating like a piece of flotsam."

"You're welcome to swim."

"Swim? To the Ionian strait? You're out of your mind!" Garlen strides closer, crowding Silco's space. The man is a foot taller, and twice as broad. Still, Mel notes that he stays out of striking distance. For a braggart, he's no fool. "I know you Trenchers know no qualms about playing hooky. But the rest of us have a schedule to keep. So get this ship back on course. Now."

Silco’s stare is inscrutable. "In time."

"Time? I'm a busy man. I don't have time to sit around on this damn tub!" Garlen squints suspiciously. "Unless you've hijacked this ship? ‘Cause if it's a ransom you're angling for—"

Silco’s smile is a gleam of serrated teeth. "Sir Garlen. I'm in the business of politics, not piracy."

"Hah! As if the distinction makes a difference."

Now the gleam is sharper. "I suppose it doesn't." He turns to the rest of the party. His low cadence rolls over the room like fog. "Allow me to explain. The delay is due to a last-minute excursion. We'll resume our course by early nightfall. But first, a short trip to the southern reef. A treasure hunt."

Garlen's confusion is writ large. "Treasure?"

"Enough, I'm sure, to satisfy everyone's appetite." His stare passes, one by one, over the assembled guests. "Ionia. Demacia. Shurima. Noxus." And, finally, alighting on Mel. "Piltover."

There is a susurrus of whispers. Mel, bemused, keeps the mask in place. He'd never mentioned her city was tied to this game. Is he testing her? Challenging her?

Or—impossibility of impossibilities—bidding her to play along?

Silco goes on, "I wonder, Sir Garlen. Have you sailed this route before?"

Garlen, bristling: "I know the waters well. I've fought battles on every stretch of these seas."

"Won, too, I expect. You are a celebrated soldier. But an explorer?" A tip of the chin. "There's a difference."

"And what would that be?"

"As Councilor Medarda says, a world of it. Of course, she is referring to chiffon versus tulle. But the principle stands." A half-lidded smile. "One's for concealment. The other for transparency."

Garlen cuts in, "If you're trying to make a point, make it quick."

"My point is only this: if you've sailed the southern waters, you'll notice a peculiarity. The Ionian Strait, on Piltover's maps, is thirteen degrees north of this point. Zaun's maps, however, place it further west. A curious discrepancy. Have you considered the reason?"

"Why the blazes would I care about Zaun's maps? Noxian charts are the only ones worth a damn."

The barest nod. "Fair point. That's the charm of maps. They're carved out by conquerors. Every chart tells a story, depending on the hand that draws it. And every chart, in its way, reveals a truth—or at least a version of it. Noxus, as the reigning authority of these waters, will always be partial to its own perspective. Piltover, as a close ally, tends to lean." A beat. "Zaun’s maps tell a different story."

"Ha!" Garlen's fist thuds the closest table. "A story about slime and scum, no doubt."

"A story about survival," Silco rejoins. "About claiming a space where none existed. At least, not on paper."

A crook of his finger, and the steward from earlier rushes up. His arms are laden with rolled-up sheafs paper. Charts, Mel realizes. The largest, unfurled on the table, is marked in different colors: a web of seaways, straits and currents. Mel, scanning it, notes a discrepancy in the dimensions: the Ionian Strait appears much narrower on Piltover's cartography, whereas Zaun's chart, drawn with exacting care, depicts it as twice its width. A series of X's, in a serpentine pattern, lead from the southern reefs up to the coastline of Zaun. The same path is absent from Piltover's chart.

Silco's fingertip traces a trail marked in indigo. "This is the shortest route from Piltover's coast. We'll reach Wuju by today if we cut across here." His nail, tapping the indigo line, cuts right. "This, however, is the shortest path according to Zaun's navigation."

"Bullshit!" Garlen says. "There is no path there! That's a damned dead-end!"

Silco regards him steadily. "Is it?"

"You're wasting our time! There's nothing there except shoals!"

Garlen's disdain is tangible: a seething red cloud. Silco, immune to sulfurous fumes, only shrugs. "Shoals, yes. Or seamounts from thousands of years ago. Many, with extensive deposits of minerals. Silver, copper, lead. Even diamonds."

Garlen barks a laugh. "And you Trenchers found this how? By sniffing up the coal dust?"

Silco, unperturbed, spreads the chart with both hands. The chandelier's rays sheen his pomaded hair like a raven's wing. Beneath, his eyes are two blots of ink. "Zaun's seafaring charts, Sir Garlen, date to antiquity. In fact, most cartographers claim they're as old as the Shuriman empire—which makes them, by definition, prehistoric. Once our city was a corollary of Shurima. Known as Oshra Va'Zaun, the City of the Sun Gates. Its routes stretched from eastern to western waters. Zaun, as its inheritor, maintains the same routes: one that, on Piltover's maps, don't even exist."

A chill tiptoes down Mel's spine. He'd never told her any of this. Had never even alluded to such knowledge. And the way he phrases it, with such calm certainty, suggests this is no revelation.

He's known about these seamounts for a long time.

"You are," she hears Cevila interject, "speaking in hypotheticals."

"Hardly. Our seafaring charts date from centuries ago. But Zaun's current naval fleet is a vital force. Since our independence, we've updated all the ancient routes—noting, of course, changes in currents and wind patterns. Our Exploration & Survey Corps have established a nautical corridor, with dry docks along every port from Zaun to South Shurima. We've also discovered new channels and navigable passages. Some take advantage of rip current systems. Others, thanks to hidden glyphs carved in the seabed, allow vessels outfitted with the right gems to sail directly to a corresponding outpost, between one blink and the next."

The crowd lapse into shock. Silco's voice—low-pitched, hypnotic—paints a vivid picture: a labyrinth of channels, each with a corresponding rune: a pathway between impossible places.

"You're saying," Hector dares, "they are like Piltover's Hex-Gates?"

"They function on similar principles. But their purpose is different. Piltover's Gates link distant ports for trade and communication. Ours link distant outposts for transport and protection."

"P-Protection?" Lady Dennings sputters. "From what?"

"War," Silco says bluntly.

"What?!"

"Civil upheavals. Foreign invasions. Call it what you will. Oshra Va’Zaun was a rich city. They did well to anticipate the worst. But for Zaun, the primary use of these routes is trade." His finger climbs homeward, to the northernmost rune. "This point, for example, leads straight to a small islet on Zaun's outskirts. It was once known as Smuggler's Cove. Now, it's called the Iron Pearl. A Free Trade Zone, where foreign goods will not be charged customs duties for transiting or storing."

There is a stir. Mel, scanning the crowd, feels a trickle of misgiving. Piltover, for decades, has had a hammerlock on premium exports. Trade taxed by the ounce. Goods vetted by bureaucratic oversight. Permits, stamped in triplicate, and revoked at the Council's whims. All to protect her city-state's reputation and interests.

Now, Silco proposes a rival haven. A Free Trade Zone, where foreign goods may come and go—unshackled by Piltover's red tape.

A new axis of commerce. And, Mel realizes, a double-edged sword.

If Piltover consents to the Iron Pearl's operation, it will grant greater her city access to foreign markets, and reduce import costs. But the arrangement also poses a threat: a competing port, under Zaun's governance, which will draw ships and revenue away from the City of Progress. Their status as the preeminent exporter will be—

Not erased, but halved.

Marriage: by any other name.

The guests are buzzing. Some with excitement; others with disbelief.

Hector echoes, "A Free Trade Zone..."

"It's been operating since Zaun's independence," Silco says. "Now we're in the process of expanding its capacity. The endeavor has taken years. A neutral zone, with an established route to any destination within a thousand leagues, with minimal delay. Better still, goods from anywhere in Runeterra can be stored and transited, for a modest tithe." He pauses. "All that's required is that our waters be respected. Along with the sovereign rights of our vessels."

Silence falls, heavy with implication.

Garlen, apoplectic, erupts, "Respect, hell! This is Noxian territory you're crossing!"

"Not on your maps. Nor on Piltover's." Silco regards him evenly. "Only on ours."

"Those waters, Trencher, are Noxian by right of conquest!"

"Not according to our Treaty with Piltover. These waters were ceded to us in exchange for recognition of our Independence." Silco eyes Mel sidelong. "The agreement, I believe, remains binding."

Garlen's fists curl like meat hooks. "You dare challenge our navy?"

"Breaching these waters without our permission is not a challenge. It's an act of trespass. As Zaun's ally, Piltover would be duty-bound to aid us in its defense." Silco's fingertip, tracing the Noxian routes, gently taps the demarcations. "Candidly, we'd rather not resort to childish games. Zaun welcomes Noxus' goodwill. Should your vessels wish to use our routes, you'll be issued proper credentials. You'll be charged reasonable fees for port-of-call. Your cargo will not be subject to scrutiny. In all ways, you'd be our honored guests. Provided—" His good eye slits, "—you extend us the same courtesy in return."

It is politely phrased, and delivered in the mildest tones. But the threat, its edge honed fine, cuts like a switchblade.

Garlen's face goes as red as his garb. "This is preposterous!"

"Is it? Zaun's treaty with Piltover was written with the consent of both parties. In the presence of diplomatic envoys. Noxus was among them. If your nation had a grievance, I'm sure they'd have taken issue. But the accord, I believe, is still in force."

"This is a damnable plot!" Garlen pivots to Mel. "Medarda, this is insanity! I demand you put a stop to this!"

Mel is stricken. But she is careful to let nothing show. Her mind races to mitigate the thunderheads swelling on the horizon. Noxian fury. International incident. Piltover caught in the middle. And Zaun, at the crux.

Trust me, Silco had said.

And now, it comes to this: her city caught between a rock and a hard place.

Fury sparks in Mel's chest. Half adrenalized burn-off, at finally having a concrete threat to face. Half slow-building horror, at confronting Silco’s cleverness in action. The man who, in one fell swoop, has backed her into a corner—while painting the entire thing in shades of diplomatic nicety.

Now, he is watching her. Waiting—for what?

Then it hits her.

Waiting for me to run.

Run—the way she’d run the first night of their voyage. Run—by staying when she should've sided with him. Run—by choosing to smooth the waters, rather than spread ripples in her wake.

Run, run, run—and this is the consequence.

Mel, reeling, takes a breath. In a sense, Silco has done exactly what he'd warned: revealed a truth that cannot be refuted. Piltover's maps are, indeed, inaccurate: the product of outdated colonialism. The waters, ceded to Zaun by Treaty, are indeed theirs—as much as the treasures that lie beneath.

And, Mel realizes, Silco's maneuver has a third layer: a sly subcurrent.

He is establishing that Zaun, by virtue of charting prowess, as an entity equal to Piltover. But also adjacent to it. Not a rival, but an ally. A peer that cannot be overlooked—because its interests are too closely tied to her city's.

It is the flipside of matrimony: a give-and-take. One of substance rather than sentiment.

Except Mel cannot forgive the blindside.

Inside, rage fizzles. Her fingers curl. She nearly seizes the nearest champagne bottle, and lobs it at Silco’s head. He deserves no less. He deserves worse. The bastard. He’d planned this since the night they’d fought. To corner her in full view of her guests. To make her prove her mettle. To demand that she take a leap.

Or else, show to the world that her vows are hollow.

Seething, Mel thinks, I will make him pay.

Then, inhaling, she steps forward.

"Sir Garlen," she says. "My husband is correct. These waters belong to Zaun."

Garlen is nearly purple; a ripe plum ready to burst. "You're siding with this rat?!"

"I am stating a fact. Zaun cannot, without jeopardizing its sovereignty, rescind the right to self-governance. And Piltover cannot, without forfeiting its good standing, repudiate that agreement. To do so would violate the laws ironclad between us." Her stare locks with the warlord's. "In sum, it is not a matter of sides. Only jurisdiction. The question is, how do you, as Noxus' envoy, plan to navigate these waters?"

Garlen's jaw works. Before he can fire off the next volley, Mel lays a cautioning hand on his arm.

"Before you reply, I suggest considering the future gains. Your nation is, at present, embroiled in a number of wars. Zaun, as a future ally, is offering to facilitate the transport of supplies—to and from Noxus's frontlines. Piltover, meanwhile, is willing to reopen discussions of a trade alliance." Beneath her lashes, Mel casts a winsome glance. "The question is, do you, as Noxus's representative, intend to pursue these opportunities?"

Garlen, a petrified bull, seems caught between charging or cowing. But, for all his bluster, the man's no fool.

"You," he growls, "are a conniving hell-bitch."

Undaunted, Mel offers a smile. "A Medarda, after all."

The warlord's teeth gnash. But his rage, though still hot, is no longer a blaze. More an ember, sullenly seething.

"So." A snort. "We're at an impasse."

Silco, at last, stirs.

"Hardly."

Rolling up the charts, he returns them to the steward. A single nod, and the man, in tandem with the staff, begin distributing life vests among the crowd. Bewildered, the guests receive the gear. Each is the same color: Zaun's trademark cadmium green.

Mel, accepting hers, is astonished by the weight. The fabric appears lined with something like lead. Runes, their meaning unknown, are stitched into the seams of the fabric.

"Impasse," Silco says, already shrugging into his own vest, "is a poor word for it." He turns to the crowd, a wary sea of faces. "I believe we are, at last, on the same page."

Hector, handling his vest with jittery fingertips, dares, "Are we—going for a swim?"

Silco smiles.

Mel feels, again, that vertiginous sensation. The world, tilting. As if currents, beneath the surface, are stirring.

And the only thing left to cling to, is the man who's dragging her down.

"Swim? No." Silco's smile spreads. "We're off on a treasure hunt."

#arcane #arcane league of legends #arcane silco #silco #forward but never forget/xoxo #forward (never forget)/xoxo #arcane mel #mel medarda #mal de mer #silco x mel #melco

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thestraggletag · 1 year

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The Caretaker, Chapter Three

AKA: A Rumbelle Sugar Daddy AU… kinda.

Rating: Explicit.

Summary: Belle French had never thought helping came with strings attached, confident that in a community people naturally tended to help each other, until the day she needed help to keep the library open and no one seemed to care. No one but Mr Gold, whose penchant for dealing could always be counted on, even if the price for his generosity was known to be steep.

The sound of glass breaking woke her up from a fitful sleep in the dead of night. It was pitch black, and the wind outside made what felt like an unreasonable amount of noise in the room. Belle snuggled further into her bed, trying to go back to sleep. But soon she began to notice the temperature drop considerably as wind began to rattle inside her room, knocking a few of her trinkets and flapping books open. Reluctant to leave the dwindling warmth of her bed but worried about what was going on she wrapped herself up in a spare quilt and walked blindly around the room, blinking to try to adjust her eyes to the darkness. It was pitch-black inside the apartment, but what little light got in came from the windows, which allowed her to easily spot the broken pane in one of the small windows in the room. Her bedroom was the only part of the apartment with windows, including a balconette that was directly below the library clock, and though she usually loved that at the moment she wished she had kept all the windows boarded up like she had found them when she had first moved in.

She moved closer to try and gauge the damage, hoping it wasn’t too bad and a bit of cardboard and some tape would see her through the night when she flinched, a previously-hidden bit of glass that fell on top of her vanity scraping against her skin as she leaned against the piece of furniture, scratching her arm. She swore, blindingly searching for the light switch till she managed to find it and flip it on. By that time she could already feel wetness on her skin, and a look confirmed she had cut herself, though thankfully it looked shallow and did not hurt as bad as it looked. Clumsily, given the location of the wound, she cleaned herself up as best she could and wrapped gauze around it, trying to think about her choices.

She could not stay there. It was raining out, so she would have to patch the hole somehow no matter what, but even if she managed to do a good job of it, good enough to keep the rain out at least, it would not help the freezing cold wind from coming in, and cranking the heat up would not help much. She set out to work, finding a box cutter, some tape and the used boxes she kept from book deliveries, working methodically as she thought about what to do after.

She could call Ruby, but they had not parted on the best of terms the last time they’d seen each other and it would be awkward, if not downright unpleasant, to call her, though she had no doubt she would offer her a place to sleep. Leroy was another option, if he was not too drunk to pick up the phone, but his place was cramped and filthy, at least from what she remembered, and there was likely to be no food in the fridge and perhaps not even a sofa for the night. She was certain she would not feel comfortable there. She would not feel comfortable anywhere, really, except perhaps-

Belle knew Alexander was a bit of a night owl, or at least their conversations seemed to have indicated such. He operated on little sleep in general, and preferred a quick kip after lunch than a restful eight hours at night. He was likely awake, and she didn’t doubt he would take her in. Still, calling him felt a bit much so Belle decided to send him a message instead, so he would only see it if he was awake, with his phone nearby, and whether he wanted to answer her at all.

She didn’t expect to hear from him right away, much less to call her, but her phone rang not even a minute after sending the text.

“Belle, what’s going on? Are you alright?”

The worry in his voice somehow unlocked something in her, because she began to choke up, which was silly. She was okay, everything was okay, she was just having a rather unfortunate night and now she was worrying Alexander over nothing.

“It’s nothing, sorry I bothered you, just-”

“It’s not nothing. Tell me.”

Before she could think better of it the entire story spilled out, from the warning Marco had given her about the windows to what she had woken up to an hour or so ago, and how freezing the apartment was. The more she talked the more she thought she had made a mountain out of a molehill and she could tough it out and try to sleep downstairs in the living room, even though she had no bedroom door and therefore no way to block the incoming cold air.

“Could I-could I stay with you tonight? I won’t be a bother, I promise. You’ll barely notice I’m there, I have a key so you don’t have to even stay up if you were about to go to bed and-”

“Belle.” Alexander’s voice cut through her ramblings, firm but not severe. “Come over. I’ll be waiting.”

She thanked him and hurriedly put on some thick socks, her rain boots and a hideous parka that she had purchased in a thrift shop when she had moved to Maine, since her lovely Burberry coat wasn’t waterproof. When she felt ready to face the elements she packed a few things she would need into a bag and exited the library. Outside the wind was even worse than she had experienced inside her room, blowing the rain sideways so it would soak her in spite of the hood she struggled to keep over her head. Alexander’s house was, unfortunately, on the outskirts of town, near the forest, and though it was usually a lovely walk at night when it was pouring it was a different experience altogether.

When she finally arrived her fingers felt too numb to manage to even fumble in her pockets for the key. She knocked instead, a bit startled when the door opened right away and she was flooded with warmth and light. A second later a hand was pressed against her cheek, and Alexander was wincing, looking vaguely angry.

“Belle? Christ, you’re fucking freezing. Come inside.”

She mumbled something about being wet and ruining his hardwood floors, but he paid no attention to her protests, gently ushering her in and towards the kitchen so she could take off her coat and hang it up in the laundry room adjacent.

“What’s that?”

Belle paused in the process of hanging up her coat, looking around to see what Alexander might be asking about. It took her a few seconds to realise the sleeves of her pyjama and the heavy cardigan she had thrown on top of it had rolled up, partially exposing her shoddy bandaging on her right arm.

“Oh, that’s nothing, I just cut myself with the glass.”

She tried to move the sleeves back to cover the wound but Alexander would have none of it, gently but firmly taking her arm and inspecting the bandage carefully, obviously noticing the blood was starting to stain even the top layer of gauze and that the tape was coming loose. He ghosted his fingers over the edge of the bandage, humming as he did so.

“This needs checking. I’ll go run a bath for you, your skin is like ice, and while the tub fills I’ll rebandage this for you. I’ll have something prepared for both of us for when you’re out of the bath, something warm. How does that sound?”

It sounded heavenly, even as guilt over the fuss he was making over her threatened to overwhelm her. She bit her lip as he limped upstairs to start the bath, fighting the impulse to make herself and her problems small, to shy away from the help he was offering and she desperately wanted. He came down a few minutes later with a first aid kit and proceeded to unwrap and inspect her wound.

“It doesn’t look like it’ll need stitches. I’ll have to disinfect it again, just in case, so I apologise for the discomfort.”

He made soothing noises when she squirmed at the pain of the antiseptic seeping into her fresh cut, the fingers of his left hand, that were holding her arm in place, gently massaging her skin, willing her to relax. Belle could not remember the last time someone had taken care of her in such a way, and in that moment the idea that people saw Alexander as a soulless monster was incomprehensible. Ruby often liked to say the pawnbroker did not have feelings beyond greed and malice, but to her it seemed rather the opposite: he felt deeply. She saw it in the way he was soft with her, in how carefully he bandaged the cut and applied a clear plastic film over the fresh gauze.

“That’s better. Now up and into the bath, and don’t forget to peel the protection film off once you’re dry, so it’s not uncomfortable. I left you some clothes as well, so you can change out of those wet pyjamas.”

She found the bathroom easily, even though she had not set foot in the upstairs of the house. It was a lovely, spacious room with a clawfoot tub filled to the brim with lavender-scented water. It took her no time to peel her clothes off, noticing only then how muddy the pants of her pyjama were, and soaked with rainwater. It was heavenly to get rid of everything and sink into the hot water, feeling returning to her frozen feet and hands as her clenched muscles began to relax, the anxiety of the past hour seeping out of her and melting into the water. She hummed, trying to remember the last time she had had a bath, a proper one with bubble bath and bath oils, but could not remember. She either hadn’t had the time in a while or the energy for anything more than a perfunctory shower, plus a proper bath required at least some investment and she still had trouble getting used to spending money like she wasn’t on survival mode anymore.

It was only when the water started to turn lukewarm that Belle took stock of the other products in the room, noticing some lovely-smelling shampoo from a brand that she had always wanted to try. It smelt citrusy, not like the sandalwood she associated with Alexander, and looked unused, almost as if it had been waiting for her. Feeling daring she decided her hair could use a wash, lathering her scalp as the bathtub drained and rinsing with fresh water from the faucet.

Afterwards she wrapped herself in the biggest towel she had ever seen, fluffy and warm and began to look around for the clothing Alexander had promised her, glad she had thought to grab some clean underwear along with her toothbrush and other necessities on the way there. She found some pyjamas neatly folded near the towel rack, and when she unfolded them she knew at once they weren’t Alexander’s. They were new, for one, a bit small for him and not his style at all. They were silk, like the set he was wearing beneath the robe he had on, but a turquoise instead of a navy blue and they had exquisitely-drawn crocodiles in shades of green, pale pink and baby blue. She snorted, seeing Alexander’s brand of humour all over the purchase. She glanced at the tag- Olivia Von Halle, no way those pyjamas were less than five hundred dollars- and noticed it was her exact size. He had bought them for her, for some reason. And though she thought she should feel wary of it or even creeped out she didn’t. She felt… something else. Effervescent almost.

She got dressed quickly, deciding she had taken too long in the bath already, and came downstairs with a comb in her hand, trying to look like she was not regretting not having hunted around for some conditioner to untangle her hair, which was abundant but also impossible to tame. She hadn’t cut it in a while, only trimmed it herself from time to time, and it was showing.

“I should cut it all off, get rid of the bother.”

“Don’t you dare.”

Alexander came out of the kitchen with a mug of something that did not look like tea, ushering her into the living room so they could sit on the sofa. Another cup of the mystery liquid was already on top of a coaster on the coffee table, along with a plate of the shortbread cookies she loved.

“I’m never going to untangle it.”

“Not with that attitude. Sit down, I made you a hot toddy to warm you up. I’ll strong-arm your hair into submission while you drink. Want to make sure you don’t catch anything from the cold, your skin was like ice when you got here.”

She accepted the drink gratefully, blowing into the hot liquid to give herself something to do while she felt Alexander settle behind her, gently taking in a lock of her hair and patiently combing it, moving from the ends upwards so as to not drag the knots. It felt shockingly intimate, for some reason, even though he was only touching her hair. He was so careful with it, though, as if it was spun gold, and she could feel the full weight of his focus on her, a heavy but not unwelcome feeling. She sipped her drink, idly realising the alcohol wasn’t hitting her quite as hard as Alexander’s gentle touches.

“It’d be a shame to cut hair like yours.”

His voice was a low, throaty purr, his accent thickening as she had always imagined it did when he was tired. At some point he finished detangling her hair, switching from combing it to brushing it, making sure to keep it away from her back as it dried. Belle finished her drink, feeling at once drowsy from the warmth of the house and the alcohol and electrified by Alexander’s gentle touch.

“Tell me what happened tonight.”

She told him all of it, including Marco’s previous warning regarding the windows. She had hoped to have more saved up to replace them all at once but clearly that would not do. She could go bit by bit, perhaps, if Marco was amenable. A window at a time, beginning with the broken one.

“I’ll call Marco in the morning and deal with it myself. All glass needs to be replaced as soon as possible. I will not have you wake up to a broken pane again.”

She made a move to turn, but he tutted and softly tugged on her hair to instruct her to remain as she was.

“I can’t possibly ask you to do that. This is my problem, I’ll deal with it. I have a plan.”

“Nonsense. I was supposed to bring the library up to code, make sure that it was left in working order.”

“And you did. This isn’t part of the deal, you don’t have to-”

She felt one of his hands fist on the fabric of her pyjamas by her hip, his forehead pressing slightly between her shoulder blades as he leant forward.

“Please, let me do this.” His voice was rough and low and Belle had to take a deep breath to try and centre herself. “Let me take care of you.”

He said it as if he was desperate to help her, as if she would hurt him by rejecting his offer. Tentatively she took the hand that was holding onto the side of her pyjama top and stroked her thumb across his knuckles, willing him to loosen his grip.

“Alright. You can call Marco.”

She felt him relax against her, his forehead pressing more against her back as he practically slumped forward, holding himself back at the last second.

“Thank you, sweet girl.”

Something about how he said it, the genuine gratitude mingled with something she could not quite name, something intense and dark and deep, stuck to the back of Belle’s mind, bothering her, but the rest of her could only concentrate on Alexander’s presence behind her, all power and energy barely contained, like a tiger ready to spring. And yet she did not feel afraid, but excited. The air between them felt charged as he continued to brush her hair, eventually discarding the brush to run his fingers down her mostly-dried curls.

“Let’s get you to bed. You’ve had quite a night.”

She let him lead her upstairs, marvelling at his strength as he carried her almost limply to the bedroom he had prepared for her, one hand on his cane and the other around her waist. Once there he tucked her in, bending down and, after a small flicker of hesitation, pressing his lips against her forehead.

“Thank you for taking me in.”

He was almost out the door before the words slipped past her lips, almost slurred as she fought with her fatigue.

“Thank you for calling me.”

The events of that night replayed themselves over and over again the following days, occupying her thoughts entirely. Marco showed up promptly the day after, in the afternoon, ready to replace the broken window that day and work out with her the best time to replace the others. But after he left there was nothing to keep her from obsessing over what Alexander had told her, the way in which he had desperately pleaded with her to let him help. It meant something, something profound, something she had gotten glimpses of before but never like that, never so raw and exposed.

She was thinking about it while shelving books one slow afternoon when she was startled by a tap on her shoulder. She jumped, the heavy encyclopaedia tome she was about to shelf with its sisters falling to the ground with a loud thud.

“Jesus, Belle, it’s me!”

Ruby backed away from her slightly, holding her hands up in an exaggerated gesture of innocence. She was dressed in her waitress uniform, a long red puffer coat and woollen hat thrown over to keep her warm. She looked sheepish and sort of downcast, clearly not there to pick a fight. Belle was glad of it.

“Can we talk? Are you free? I got us some chocolate and cookies to sweeten the deal.”

She took out a small thermos and a paper bag from inside her jacket, holding them out like offerings to an angry god. Belle sighed, trying to put on a reassuring smile.

“No eating or drinking in the library. Let’s go to my office, I have some mugs there and a plate for the cookies.”

It was incredibly awkward at first, both women stuck inside the small room, sipping chocolate and looking at each other, expecting the other to speak first. After a while, though, Ruby took a deep breath and set her cup of hot chocolate down.

“I’m sorry, Belle. About everything, including how long it took me to get here to apologise.”

Belle blinked, surprised. She knew that Ruby showing up with food was meant to soften things between them, a sign that her friend wanted a reconciliation, but she had not thought it would include a direct apology. Perhaps a “I hate it when we fight, let’s forget about it, okay?” or a half-hearted, indirect admission of partial guilt. Nothing more.

“You were right, about everything. I thought you weren’t at first and I was so angry but I talked about it with Granny and I was surprised that she did not feel the same as I did. I mean, not about Gold, I didn’t tell her about that part, but the rest. Looking back I see you were not okay, not for a long time, but I didn’t wanna see it. I just thought… You’re so independent. You could handle anything. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I was just unwilling to get out of my comfort zone and see that maybe our relationship had always been one-sided.”

Belle bit back the natural instinct to contradict her friend, to tell her that their relationship hadn’t always been unbalanced, but she held herself back. It wouldn’t do to lie and minimise the hurt after all that struggle to express it in the first place. And clearly it had taken a lot for her friend to come to the library as well, she should hear her out completely and honestly.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t see you struggle. That I didn’t see you suffer. That I minimised your worries. I thought about what it would’ve meant for the library to close and all I could think about was how much I’d miss you.”

Ruby burst into tears then, leaning over to give her a hug. The strength of it spoke of her genuine contrition, making Belle start crying herself. As much as it had felt good to give the waitress a piece of her mind it felt even better to be acknowledged and validated, and she was relieved that her friend had chosen to apologise instead of doubling down. Ruby was a genuinely good person, and she had been her rock during that first year at Storybrooke, before things had gotten uneven between them. And Belle had to acknowledge she herself had somehow encouraged that by giving without taking, falling into familiar relationship patterns that replicated those she had learned as a child, especially after her mother’s death. It didn’t absolve the waitress from her guilt but it did let Belle know what she needed to look out for going forward.

“I’m glad you kept fighting for this town even when everyone in it turned their backs on you.”

“Not everyone.”

The librarian very much wished she could control the blush she felt creeping across her face, wondering if she could pass it off as the result of the steam from the hot chocolate hitting her face. The waitress arched an eyebrow, smiling tentatively, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

“Am I now allowed to ask after Mr Gold now? I promise to keep an open mind. I’m sorry about what I implied before, but something is going on and I want to know, if you want to tell me.”

Belle hesitated, desperately needing to talk with someone about whatever was going on between her and Alexander but at the same time refusing to do so before she understood it herself.

“I want to, but I’m not ready yet. Later.” She looked up to notice Ruby frowning and rushed to reassure her. “I’m just not ready to talk about it but I will. I promise. Thank you for the offer Ruby. And the apology.”

“So… are we back to being friends? Because I’ve been miserable these past few weeks and Granny is about to kick me out over my moping.”

“She would never. But yes, we’re friends again. Better friends than before, I hope.”

Ruby gave her a characteristic wolfish smile before leaning close for another fierce hug.

“You bet.”

“Did Marco finish replacing the windows in your flat?”

Belle looked up from the chessboard, studying Alexander as he fiddled with the white queen she had taken off the board a couple of moves earlier with her remaining knight.

“Yes. He’s confident the windows can withstand a hurricane at this point and it does feel like the apartment is more insulated, warmer. Thank you again for that, by the way.”

“My pleasure.”

He smiled, still refusing to meet her gaze, and moved a bishop across the board to threaten one of her rooks. A bold move, but she had expected it. He was a rather aggressive chess player, which made him deadly in the short term but beatable if she managed to sidestep his brutal attacks.

“About that, I think I’ve figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

She moved her pawn, watching as he swept his bishop to take her rook. If she could manage to keep him distracted it would only take a couple more moves for her to get her queen back, and then the last piece would be in position for a checkmate.

“Why you made that deal with me. A deal for my time. A deal that hasn’t seemed to benefit you at all.”

Her words finally managed to make him lift his eyes off the board and settle on her. He looked composed at first glance, but Belle had had months to learn how to read him and she could easily spy the flicker of nervousness in the corner of his eyes, the tense setting of his jaw.

“Whatever do you mean?”

She moved her pawn again, trying to appear nonchalant.

“I thought it was a power move at first, but that didn’t last long. You never flexed your deal to others or treated me with anything but respect and courtesy, not to mention that I got to know you and realised that just wasn’t something you seemed to want.”

She gestured towards the board and watched him as he moved a knight to a rather random position. She doubted that it was a calculated move.

“Then I thought you were lonely. And I was right about that, so I was convinced for the longest time I had figured it out. You just wanted a companion. But that wasn’t true either.”

She moved her pawn again, reaching the end of his side of the board and reclaiming her queen from his rather lax grip.

“This deal- it wasn’t about power, or about loneliness. I think-I think it’s about you taking care of me.”

“What a ridiculous notion.”

Belle moved her queen to threaten both his wandering bishop and the pawn keeping her rook from checking his king.

Everything you’ve done has been to take care of me. The food, the clothes, the free time. You’ve tricked me into comfort, somehow. And I could not see it, not until you made it obvious. Till the other night.”

He moved his pawn forward, sacrificing his bishop to her queen. She took it quickly, her mind already mapping out the final moves, making sure he had no wiggle room left. He was slippery and violent when cornered, after all.

“And so what if I did? You’re a proud woman, Belle, and so terribly unused to unburdening yourself to others or accepting help. You were literally starving yourself trying to do things alone, thinking no one noticed. But I noticed. Every fucking day. So when the opportunity presented itself to help you I took it. I’m not apologising for that. I only wish you would’ve asked sooner.”

He snarled the last part, though Belle sensed none of his animosity was directed at her, not really. She knew there was a violent side to Alexander, that wasn’t just town gossip gone wild. But she knew, instinctually, that he would never hurt her. The most she had to fear was him being violent in her name, for her sake.

“Is this some- some pity thing?” This was her greatest fear, and now that she had voiced it she wished she could take it all back. She didn’t want to know. As long as he didn’t tell her outright that he felt sorry for her she could pretend he didn’t and nothing would change in their relationship. His pity would devastate her.

“It’s not fucking pity. No one who’s ever known you could pity you.”

“Then what is it? Is it kindness? You were just being kind?”

“Could we please drop it?”

His words were a nervous whine, with an edge of a warning at the end. Usually that level of distress would be enough to make her stop but Belle was determined to get an answer. If he felt sorry for her she would rather know then and there and deal with that before it was too late.

“Just tell me what this is. I deserve to know.”

“It’s just-” Abruptly he got up, knocking a few pieces off the chessboard in the process. It was just as well, they both knew she had won the game already. Just as they both knew that she would win whatever power struggle was happening between them now.

“Just what?”

“Can’t we speak about something else?”

“Just what, Alexander?”

“I love it. Taking care of you. Watching the tiredness and anxiety seep out of you. Watching you regain colour and vitality. Laugh more, indulge more. Love taking you to new places and giving you beautiful clothes, things that you deserve. It’s a power that I marvel at.”

He was pacing back and forth, like a caged panther, and though Belle felt her heart speed up she knew it wasn’t from apprehension. It was something else, something she could almost taste, like a storm brewing between them. Looking more frenzied the more he thought he sat down again, his hand grabbing the wrist of her outstretched hand, which was fiddling with his black king. His grip was frantic, as if he was afraid she would bolt unless he held onto her.

“It’s not me being kind, it’s more than that. I don’t just want to help you. I want to spoil you. I want to give you everything you deserve, not just what you need. I want to wrap you in expensive silk and satin, fill your arms with bracelets and your neck with chains. I want to see the way diamonds and pearls look against your skin, whether gold or platinum compliments you more. The idea of being able to do it sets my blood on fire. You have no idea about the depths of this depravity of mine, how I’ve had to curtail my baser instincts, my more urgent impulses. I’ve been tame till now, living off of the clothing I was allowed to buy you, and the food I was allowed to feed you.”

Alexander’s hold on her wrist tightened to the point that it was painful, but Belle barely noticed. Her attention was riveted on the pawnbroker’s face as a glint of desperation shone in his eyes. Alexander Gold was nothing if not composed, a man used to always being in control, no matter the time or the circumstance. And yet he was unhinged then, as if something inside him had finally snapped, something that had been quietly building for a while. Something she had managed to catch a glimpse of the night he took her in.

“If you could- if you would ever consider, just consider, letting me- I mean, if you could ever consider indulging me I would drench you in jewellery, surround you in books, lay you in Savoir sheets and drape you in the softest Sarrieri chemises.” He spoke in hushed tones, feverish and almost unintelligible given how his accent had thickened, and yet Belle was focused on his words, his tone, the feel of his fingers as they began to caress her wrist above her thundering heartbeat.

“Nothing would please me more, bring me more joy, than to cook decadent meals for you. Pamper you with whatever you wanted, at whatever time of the day you’d allow it. Buy you expensive shoes, take you out to experience new things, new sights.”

“You would-” Belle paused, trying to wrap her mind around what she was hearing, her efforts hampered by the distraction of his fingers ghosting over the skin of her arm, idly going higher with every pass. “You would give me anything I wanted?”

“Name it and it’s yours.”

She felt an initial rush of power at the offer. Alexander Gold bowed to no one and yet here he was, putting himself in her hands, willing to do whatever she asked him. And he was powerful, his offer was real: if he offered anything it was because he could get anything. After that came and went she began to process what was going on in front of her, what Alexander was trying to say.

“This is- this is a sex thing?”

She winced, wishing that she had found a way to phrase it that didn’t make her sound like some naive, inexperienced idiot. Not that she did have a lot of experience, but she was well-read on the topic. Extremely well-read, some might say.

“It’s not- not that, but it’s beyond that. It’s always been the way I express affection. It hasn’t happened often in my life, and after the disaster that was my last attempt at a romantic relationship in which I took care of my significant other I shut that part of myself away. An annoying quirk I decided I would do better without. Until I met you.”

The way he looked at her, the adoration in his eyes, how had Belle missed it all that time? It wasn’t new, he wasn’t staring at her in some special novel way, it was just that now she understood. Like she had suddenly developed an ability she hadn’t had before. He clung to her still, both hands holding onto her arm, his fingers tracing patterns against the sensitive skin of her inner arm, and the feeling of it grounded her somehow, made it all feel real.

“You’re kind, and brave, and funny, and I could not help myself. I tried. I told myself I would be unwelcome. That you were just being polite when you talked to me, or friendly, the way you would be to anyone else. And that you didn’t need me poking around, giving myself the right to barge in where I was not invited. But I couldn’t help it. I wanted to take care of you.”

Belle could not remember the last time someone had so fiercely felt the need to look after her, not with the single-minded passion she could see in Alexander’s face. It was heady, which was unexpected. She had always prided herself on her independence, and would’ve thought it difficult to even contemplate giving up, even if just a little. And yet-

“So- so it isn’t a sex-”

“Oh, no, it very much is. I haven’t- allowed myself to feed those fantasies, but they’re there, clawing at the last remnants of my self-restraint. It’s- it’s a natural extension, I suppose, wanting to give you pleasure in whatever way it’s possible. Wanting to- to- I can’t quite put it into words. Too-” he paused, as if trying to come up with the right word. “Too intense.”

Belle knew, without a sliver of doubt, that if she simply changed the topic he would drop it. Or that if she made it clear she wanted to hear none of it, he would shut up and never bring it up again.

“Show me, then.”

The words barely made it out of her lips, breathy and thin, but they resonated across the room, as if she had shouted them. Alexander leaned back against his chair, as if to put as much distance between themselves as possible, one of his hands fumbling for his cane, as if even sitting down he felt out of balance.

“What?”

“You said you couldn’t quite put into words what you wanted to do to me. So… show me.”

Belle took a deep breath, trying to look calm. She kept replaying her manta over and over inside her head: ‘Do the brave thing and bravery will follow.’

“You cannot possibly want me to-”

“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise. Unless you don’t want to, after all.”

She didn’t know what led her to question his commitment, given how passionately he had spoken about what he wished to do to her, how he wished to bring her pleasure, but it somehow seemed to do the trick, the disbelief leeching off his face to be replaced with single-minded determination. He looked around, seeming to be considering something, shaking his head before standing up and taking her hand.

“Not here. You deserve a bed, at the very least.”

He led her up the stairs, and though she had already been there before it all felt new and exciting to Belle, different from the other night, when she had not had the understanding of Alexander she did then. They bypassed the room she had slept in the other night and went into the next room, which she now realised was his room. It was the way she had imagined his bedroom to be like, the walls a dark burgundy and the room almost entirely dominated by a four-poster bed, with an exquisitely-carved headboard.

“I wanted to bring you here, the other day. Had to talk myself out of it a hundred times. I was afraid of making you uncomfortable, but the thought of you in my bed was almost enough to override my common sense.”

It was wild to Belle how earnest and passionate he sounded, given how well he had hid that part of himself for months. And yet, it was not completely foreign to her, this side of him: Alexander was naturally intense about the things that fascinated him, from antiques to books. She just had never expected to find herself added to the list.

“It’s a lovely room.”

Lovely and warm, which made her feel more than a bit overdressed. She pulled her cardigan off, both in fear of breaking into a rather unsexy sweat, and to perhaps signal her willingness for things to progress further, pleased to have worn one of her nicer shirts- a cream Valentino blouse with a ruffled collar and cap sleeves. She watched his eyes darkened as he took her in, his gaze lingering on the still-healing cut on her arm. Like he had predicted it hadn’t needed stitches, though it was still in the process of closing.

“Does it still hurt?”

Daringly, she extended her arm towards him, letting him ghost a finger over the line.

“Not at all. It’s mostly a bother, but it’s healing fast.” She paused, breath hitching as he leaned down and, gathering her forearm gently between his hands, kissed the tip of the cut. “You took good care of me that night.”

The words made him shudder, and the grip on her arm tightened slightly. His lips trailed across the thin red line, mapping it carefully. It felt very intimate and Belle could hardly believe she was getting turned on from just having her arm kissed. Eventually he moved up again, kissing the crook of her arm, nosing her shoulder and, finally, mouthing the exposed skin of her neck. She could feel his sudden spike of annoyance at how the high neckline of the blouse limited his exploration so she reached behind, undoing the top button on the back of the shirt and guiding the dainty little zipper bellow it down as far as it could go, so that the shirt would gape open at the neck. He rewarded her by clutching her close, no longer keeping some distance between them as he seemed adamant about doing before, his lips firmer as they explored her neck and her now-exposed shoulder, one of his hands, the one not around her waist, untucking her blouse from her pleated rose skirt to slide up her naked back, the contact electric. She gasped, arching against him as she bit back a needy little moan.

“Sweet girl…”

His voice was soft, cajoling, even as his touch became more insistent, more desperate. He explored her clavicle- a zone that before Belle would not have found to be erogenous at all for her- and other shoulder thoroughly before he grew displeased again, the hand on her back grabbing the hem of her and tugging upwards, his intent clear. She tutted in mock reprimand at his rough handling of the garment, dutifully raising her arms so he could slip it off her.

“Careful, I like this shirt!”

“I’ll buy you twenty like it.”

It wasn’t the promise of him lavishing her with designer clothing that had her heart speeding up but rather the desperation in his voice, as if he would die if he was denied more access to her skin. His mouth became frenzied as it seemed to try and map out her entire torso, his teeth nipping at the white bow of her bra, tucked neatly between her breasts.

“If I ruin this lovely bit of lace, would you let me buy you a replacement? I’ve seen some lovely sets at La Perla and Simone Pérèle.”

Belle sunk her hands into his hair, unable to voice her ascent or denial. She was too lost in the feel of his touch and the notion that he had browsed lingerie for her, thinking what would look good on her, what he would want to see her in.

“Talk to me, sweet girl.” Alexander knelt down, his hands around her waist, his tongue teasing her bellybutton.

“A-about what?”

She could hardly think of anything. She doubted she would be able to tell him her name if he asked.

“Am I pleasing you?”

In almost any different context Belle would have thought such a question during sex to be boastful. But there was genuine curiosity in his tone, mixed with the slightest hint of anxiety she wished to completely vanish.

“Yes.” At first that one word is all she could articulate, especially as she felt his fingers working on the hook and zipper of her skirt. She was glad that she had worn thigh-high stockings instead of tights in spite of the cold. She held onto his hair as he gently tugged her now loose skirt down, careful to help her step out of it before he tossed it aside.

“I need more from you, darling. Tell me what you want. Tell me what to do to make you feel good.”

The way he slurred out the word ‘good’, as if he was drunk on her, her body and the experience of being able to touch her and kiss her, was overwhelming. He was kneeling in front of her, looking up at her with both tender admiration and passionate need and the sight was enough to conquer her remaining embarrassment and loosen her tongue and propel her into action. With shaky but determined hands she reached behind, deftly undoing the clasp of her bra, letting it fall to the ground without hesitation. She didn’t want him to think she had any doubts about what they were already doing and about to do. She took one of his hands, the right one with the moonstone ring she had often admired, and pressed it over her left breast.

“I want you to touch me here.” He curled his fingers around her flesh reverently, his thumb gently tracing the red, angry patch of skin right beneath her breast where the underwire of her bra had dug in. As he did this she took his other hand and, after only the briefest hesitation, pressed it against her lace-covered cunt. “And here.”

The sound he made in response to her little bit of daring was inhuman, a growl that she shouldn’t have found as arousing as she did. Now that he had permission he didn’t hesitate, the fingers of his right hand eagerly exploring the soft flesh of her breast while his right hand traced the lace of her panties, playing briefly with the scalloped seams before moving the fabric aside so that flesh could meet flesh. She was wet already, she knew, but it felt even more as Alexander’s fingers glided over her bare cunt. She had grown up next to the beach and had gotten used to waxing, leaving only a strip of hair, what the Americans called a “French bikini”. She had kept the practice out of habit and comfort, though it had been ages since she had last gone to the beach in a bikini, given that she lived in Maine.

“You’re so soft, everywhere.” His voice was rough like gravel, and the way he pressed his face against her bare stomach made it so that she could feel it more than hear it. “Just like I always imagined.”

She wanted to reward his words with some of her own but the stimulation was getting to be too much and all she could concentrate on was on holding onto him to avoid toppling over. Eventually, likely noticing the way her legs shook with increasing violence the more he explored her, he manoeuvred them so a simple, gentle shove landed her on the bed, with Alexander quickly following after.

It was then that it occurred to Belle that though he had had his fingers inside her, or close enough, they had yet to properly kiss and it was a travesty. Taking advantage of the fact that she now could move more freely she tugged him upwards, swallowing his grunt of protest as she pressed her lips against his. It wasn’t soft as tentative as she had first imagined it would be, nor slow and deep as she had later fantasised. It was violent and hurried, some unknown urgency pushing them both into trying to consume each other. Belle returned one of her hands to his hair, obsessed with the silky feel of it and the way he responded to having it tugged, how in control it made her feel to be able to render him senseless with such a simple gesture.

Though the kiss was frenzied and desperate neither was in a hurry to move on to other things, content to let out months of pent-up frustration with what amounted to heavy-petting. Belle managed to make him lose the jacket and the tie, with his shoes coming off right before his hands busied themselves sliding her stocking down her legs one at a time, his fingers curling around her thighs as he did so. He was still too overdressed while she was clad only in a pair of increasingly-uncomfortable panties, so she eventually, with a low whine at the unfairness of it all, let go of his mouth, shoving him backwards and stopping his determined efforts to resume kissing every inch of her body.

“Clothes. Off. Now. Or I’m putting mine on and walking out.”

It was the emptiest threat Belle had ever issued and yet, given the ruthless efficiency with which Alexander took off his shirt, undershirt and trousers, it was clearly effective. He paused slightly only when it came to removing his socks, which puzzled Belle till she caught a glimpse of the mass of discoloured scar tissue that was his right ankle. Till then she had all but forgotten Alexander’s limp, had not factored it at all in what they were doing, but the reminder gave her pause. She chewed her lower lip, wondering whether to say anything and risk offence or say nothing and potentially have him overdo himself while refusing to tell her. Finally, when he reached out to kiss her again she took hold of his face so that she could look him in the eye.

“If at any point you’re uncomfortable or in pain let me know, please.” He could see the annoyance and shame flit through his eyes so she reached up to brush her nose against his. “Tell me and I promise to do the same.”

It was a rather disarming argument, something he could not object to and proof that there was no shame in showing vulnerability between them. He nuzzled her back, his lips quirking into an almost unwilling half-smile.

“Deal.”

He slanted his mouth against her as if to seal the promise, and the rushed, desperate feeling from later slowly returned, pecks and caresses turning quicker, harder, bolder. Belle felt a bit overwhelmed by the amount of Alexander’s naked skin nor readily available to her touch and wasted no time mapping his chest, with the sparse and greying chest hairs and the occasional faded scar, which she had to keep herself from asking about. He also had a tattoo on his forearm, a lizard of some sort, which she lovingly mapped as a way to try and distract herself from how good his thigh felt as it pressed against her cunt.

She wanted to offer him pleasure but he seemed determined to drown her in her own, nipping at the skin just below her breasts as his hands quickly disposed of her now sodden underwear to then delve into her. She was more than ready, drenched in a way that would have made her feel embarrassed if her body wasn’t on fire and her mind completely unable to form coherent thought beyond the need for more, and there, and now. In the end it did not take more than a few minutes with two of his fingers deep inside her and his thumb stroking her slippery clit for her to break apart, the experience far more intense than the mellow orgasms she was used to giving herself. She tried to clamp a hand over her mouth, embarrassed for the sounds coming out of her, but he tore it away almost viciously, looking down at her with such an intense look in his eyes he almost seemed angry, if not for the faint uptilt of his lips.

“I’ve earned those sounds, sweet girl. Don’t deny me them.”

It was hard to let go of the last bit of self-consciousness she had, but it was also exhilarating, and the last remnants of pleasure burning through her bloodstream seemed amplified every time she cried out. He was caring in the aftermath, blanketing her with his body and trading soft, languid kisses while she came down from her high. It was as if the earlier urgency had passed and they could take their time, could explore and gauge each other’s reactions to whatever new they tried. And yet there was a remaining frisson of tension in Belle every time Alexander’s hard cock brushed against her, still hidden behind the Scotsman’s silk boxers. It reminded her that he was still aching, even though he had made her come. Resolute, she tried flipping them over, determined to let him rest his ankle and let her ride him instead, but he shied away, his mouth going lower and lower, living a damp trail in its wake.

“Alex, what- Oh.”

Belle had had someone go down on her before. It wasn’t an entirely new experience by any means, but it was perhaps the aspect of sex she was less familiar with. Most men she had been with seemed to find it undesirable at best and a turn-off at worst, and Belle had never insisted because she had never much seen the appeal of it. In books it always seemed sexy but in real life it was rather underwhelming, and sometimes even uncomfortable.

But the moment Alexander pressed his mouth against her sex she knew that it would be different. Perhaps because her feelings towards him were so strong, or because he was so good at it, or because he seemed so completely determined to read her every whimper and twitch of her legs to figure out what she liked and how she liked it. It was as if whatever she had experienced before was muted and sloppy, uncoordinated, whereas Alexander was a man on a mission, single-minded in his pursuit of her pleasure. And, she thought giddily, she had always known he had a silver tongue.

“Oh, yes, there, please.”

She didn’t mind whining anymore, or thrashing, liking the way he held her down, anchored her to the bed, one hand between her breasts and the other holding onto one of her legs. Though she thought it would take her time to come again her orgasm built up out of nowhere, taking her completely by surprise. She arched her back, grateful for Alexander’s firm hold on her body keeping her from potentially falling off the bed. He petted her as if to calm her down while his tongue kept constant, almost painful stimulation over her clit, never quite enough to be too much, to be overwhelming, but feeling as if it was always skirting that edge. The orgasm was more drawn-out than the one before, lingering as a pulsating feeling between her legs longs after Alexander was done lapping at her cunt.

“You were so good. So good for me, sweet girl.”

He kept praising her, his hands stroking her legs, her stomach, her arms, whatever they could reach, trying to soothe her. He told her how much he had enjoyed it, how she was a dream come true, how this had been better than the fantasies he had built in his head were nothing compared to the reality of her, her smell, her taste. It would have made her blush, if her body had the energy for it. This is what he had meant by wanting to take care of her, and he had been genuine when he had told her that he would like nothing more. She could tell there was no expectation of more from him, he wasn’t simply scoring points so that she would later go down on him or let him do something that otherwise she wouldn’t have. He was not keeping score at all, or hoping for anything other than what they had done. She was sure that if she told him she was done he would not object, would not act as if she owed him anything.

That just made Belle more determined to take matters into her own hands and so when she felt a bit more in control of herself she rose up, deftly planting both knees on the mattress on either side of Alexander’s narrow hips. She laughed at his startled look, leaning down to give him a reassuring kiss while her hands tugged insistently on his underwear, the intent clear. It took some wiggling and huffing, less graceful than she would have liked but with the aftershocks of two orgasms still in her system Belle found herself unable to care. Finally he was as naked beneath her as she was above him, and though she would have liked time to explore that, to trace the veins of his cock and explore just what part of it was more sensitive to her touch, she knew that Alexander would not stand much more teasing and she would rather he come in her. The way he whined and thrashed when she ghosted the tips of her fingers over the underside of his member told her it was all the foreplay he could possibly stand.

“You ready, darling?”

“Been ready for hours. Days. Weeks.” Alexander took a deep breath when she got a firm hold of his cock, likely trying to keep himself in check. “I’ve been ready since the day I met you.”

“Aren’t you sweet.”

She sunk into him without further ado, loving the way he dug his fingernails into the sides of her waist, his whole body tensing beneath her. He was thick and perhaps if she hadn’t been so thoroughly wet and slick the sudden intrusion of him into her cunt would’ve been uncomfortable, but all she could feel was how perfectly he filled her up, how he stretched her in just the right way. Alexander, meanwhile, did not seem to be enjoying their union as much, thrashing beneath her, clearly eager to move but fiercely determined not to do so without her permission. She leaned down, taking a hold of a lock of his hair and tugging, forcing him to tilt his head back and calm down. Once he stopped moving altogether she pecked him on the lips as a reward.

“Good boy.”

She began to rock then, slow and steady at first, trying to figure out if any sort of movement on her part could potentially jolt his ankle, increasing the pace when she saw no hint of paint bleed into his features. She was surprised to feel the slow burn of arousal build inside her as well, having thought that after two orgasms her body would be too spent and overly-stimulated to allow her to come another time.

“Harder, Belle, please. Faster.”

Alexander’s hips rose to meet her thrusts, as much as he possibly could while keeping his right leg mostly immobile, and though it was rocky at first they soon found a rhythm, a back and forth that had her gasping, struggling to concentrate on her partner’s pleasure even as her own began to build up. Finally, when the pawnbroker’s slippery fingers began to rub her clit, providing that bit of extra friction she needed, she broke, tipping over the edge just as she could feel him do the same, delighted by the filthy profanity in heavily-accented English that accompanied the Scotsman’s orgasm. She focused on keeping her thrusts, making sure to milk every little bit of pleasure out of him. After they were both spent she fell against him, his hands coming around to cocoon her in warmth.

“Well, that was-”

She struggled for breath, feeling as if she had just ran a marathon. She was certain she would be sore in the morning, but could not find it in herself to mind. Instead she relaxed, complaining a little bit when Alexander nudged her to move so they could both slip under the covers, with her curling against him the moment they were both tucked into bed.

“Perfect.”

The way he said it, a mixture of awed and satisfied, his accent wrapping around the word, made her toes curl. She turned to her side to face him, idly combing his hair into a semblance of order, loving the way he leaned into her touch, like a cat.

“Anything else I can do for you? After a short rest, I beg you.”

“Yes, actually.” She paused, the pawnbroker turning to face her, expectant. “I want to go out. On a date. In public. Here. I-I don’t want to hide this, hide us. Would that- would that be okay?”

The smile that spread across his face was soft and beautiful, and there was surprise there too.

“It would be more than okay.”

They decided that their first public date should be at Granny’s. It was, after all, the point of origin and dissemination of most gossip in town, barring Mrs Nolan’s classroom. Belle had prepared herself for being gaped at and talked about. It wouldn’t bother her, and whoever had a problem with it either was not worth the trouble. Ruby would understand, and Granny. Leroy wouldn’t, but he wouldn’t give her a hard time about it, and as someone who both knew what it was to have a controversial love and what it was to be fodder for town gossip. He would probably get into a fight or two if he caught people talking badly about Belle and her new relationship, even if he privately gave her grief for it.

She dressed carefully, not too flirty but at the same time trying to be clear that she was on a date. She had carefully selected a Miu Miu dress she had bought and paid for herself, a respectable crepe-de-chine mini dress that with her height lost a lot of the scandalous appeal of the hemline and with her modest breast lost also a lot of the impact of its statement v-neckline, paired with a cream, oversized cashmere cardigan that was meant to soften the look and was also something she had gotten from Alexander. She knew now that he enjoyed seeing her in things he purchased for her and she figured him being in a good mood would go a long way in making the evening a success.

They met just outside the library after closing time, Alexander waiting patiently as she locked the building before offering his arm to escort her to the dinner. They had gotten used to walking that way, with her pressed up against him, but never while in town, and they attracted a fair bit of attention in their short walk. Belle almost burst out laughing when Mother Superior passed by and stared, a shocked look in her face.

“The way she’s gawking you’d think we were doing more than walking arm in arm.”

“Given Mother Superior’s experience this is probably what she considers second base.”

Their laughter garnered them even more attention, especially Alexander’s booming bark, which the people of Storybrooke had perhaps never heard before. Soon enough they were in front of Granny’s and Belle was surprised to see it was packed. Ruby, at her request, had reserved her a small corner booth like she had asked her, but there were no other tables available and most of the bar spots were taken too. She paused, bracing herself when she caught Ruby’s stare, seeing the calculating look in her friend’s eyes and the way she seemed to focus on her close proximity to the pawnbroker.

“You sure you want to do this today, Belle?” Alexander must have interpreted her pause wrong, because he looked at her with gentle understanding. “We can do it another day, when there aren’t as many people around.”

“You would rather wait?”

“I would rather you not be uncomfortable.”

Belle relaxed, understanding. Alexander wasn’t getting cold feet, he was, as always, concerned for her. How she had managed to miss how much he cared for her for months she would never know, not when it was so clear to her now. Emboldened by his little, unconscious show of affection she rose on her tiptoes, hands resting on Alexander’s shoulders to steady herself as she captured his lips with her own. She meant it to be a soft, affectionate peck, a message rather than a spectacle, but she did not count on the way Alexander would always respond to her, how he would turn a goodbye kiss into a ten-minute tug-of-war where Belle struggled to keep her clothes on because she was going to be late and she took her librarian duties very seriously, thank you very much. Like in those occasions when she pulled back he chased her mouth with his, his left hand going around her waist to press her firmly against him, leaving her no choice really but to wrap her arms more firmly around him, fingers tugging on his hair in silent reprimand, which she knew was counterproductive. But it wasn’t her fault that he was such a good kisser, or that his barely-restrained passion made her forget herself and where she was-

A car horn sounded in the distance, bringing her back to reality. Reluctantly but firmly she pushed Alexander away, patting his hair into some semblance of order once she saw how she had mused it. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Ruby’s flabbergasted expression, but noticed she seemed excited rather than outraged. She pointedly did not look at anyone else, deciding that they didn’t matter.

“Shall we go in? I’m dying for one of Granny’s burgers.”

Alexander nodded, looking vaguely dazed and, dared she say it, rather pleased.

“After you, my dear.”

#rumbelle #rumbelle fic #the caretaker #thestraggletag fanfiction

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